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2 J. World Intell. Prop. 3 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/jwip2 and id is 1 raw text is: Harmonization of Intellectual Property Laws in ASEAN Issues and Prospects Assafa ENDESHAW* INTRODUCTION The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) now groups together nine countries' most of which have put in place intellectual property (IP) laws that were originally either inherited from the colonial past or adopted later as part of the urge to modernize, The ASEAN law-making process in the post-independence era was predicated, as a former Secretary-General of the ASEAN Law Association wrote, on the need to provide guarantees for the safety of loans and investment capital and the transfer of technology from abroad for national development, as well as to meet new requirements triggered by changing values resulting from advances in modernization.2 There is an additional contemporary factor that impels members of ASEAN to revise their IP laws: they are expected to streamline their laws with those of the main industrial nations in order to live up to their treaty obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTo) incorporating the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). Furthermore, while nearly all of ASEAN have made changes in their pre-TRIPS laws and are expected to effect the transition fully by the year 2000, there is a new desire to come up with an ASEAN perspective and, however surprising it might seem, a unified IP system for all of them. Although no fixed time-tables have been drawn up, ASEAN leaders adopted, on 15 December 1995, the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Intellectual Property Co-operation, including the setting up of a regional patent and trademark office. That Agreement was followed up at a meeting held from 10-12 April 1996 in * Ph.D, LL.M, LL.B; Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. AsEAN currently comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. Of these, Brunei joined in 1984; Vietnam became a Member in 1995; Laos and Myanmar were admitted in 1997. The other six countries were signatories of the Treaty from 1967. Cambodia's membership is still under consideration. 2 See Tunku Mohammad Radhie, Harmonization of Laws: Issues and Prospects in ASEAN Law, Technology and Development, ASEAN Law and Society Journal, July-December 1986, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 50-61, at 52-3.

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