Trade & investment

ICC Spanish translation of the 2010 IP Roadmap

  • 17 June 2010

The Spanish translation of the 10th edition of the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC)Intellectual Property Roadmap for Business and Policy Makers was launched this week during a meeting of the Interamerican Association of Intellectual Property in Barcelona, which attracted close to 300 delegates from Spain and Latin America.

The Intellectual Property (IP) Roadmap, updated every two years, has been translated into Spanish since 2007, demonstrating ICC’s commitment to the Spanish-speaking business community and ensuring their engagement and influence on the major issues they face.

“The preface to the first edition of the roadmap noted that intellectual property had become a key issue for businesses and policy makers,” said Peter Siemsen, Brazilian Vice-Chair of the ICC Commission on Intellectual Property.  “This is undoubtedly truer today than ever before, especially in the emerging economies of Latin America.”

Home to around 550 million people, Latin America has several of the world’s most dynamic economies. Ranked by the International Monetary Fund in 2008 as the world’s 10th largest economy, Brazil is predicted to be the fourth largest by 2050. Mexico is the world’s 12th largest economy, and sits with Argentina and Brazil as part of the G20 group that has driven the international response to the global economic crisis.

Jorge Chavarro, a Colombian member of the ICC commission, whose firm translated the roadmap into Spanish, said: “The IP Roadmap provides a unique overview of key developments in IP policy and is much appreciated by the business community and policy makers worldwide. We are very pleased that the Spanish version will allow Latin American and other Spanish-speaking business people, specialists and policy-makers to benefit from insights by international experts on the most pressing IP policy issues of today.”

The 10th edition roadmap addresses the interaction between IP and other policy areas such as economic development, the environment, technology development and transfer, competition policy, the use of open source software and data privacy. It also examines cross-cutting issues such as enforcement, problems in international litigation and on the Internet, the arbitration and mediation of IP disputes, counterfeiting and piracy, and the exhaustion of IP rights.

“The 2010 edition integrates significant new developments in the IP field – such as increased cooperation by patent offices to address the patent backlog – and approaches the important issue of technology transfer in a more holistic manner, including in the area of climate change,” said Ron Myrick, chair of the ICC task force which prepared the publication. “We have also increased our focus on topics which are receiving more attention, such as client privilege for professional IP advice and domain names.”

In their introduction to the publication, David Koris, Chair of the ICC Commission on Intellectual Property, and ICC Secretary General Jean Rozwadowski write that the most striking changes in the IP policy landscape over the last decade have resulted from the impact of new technologies on society and business.

They note: “The spread of digital technologies and Internet connectivity has dramatically changed the way in which businesses develop, exploit and protect their intellectual property. Online distribution, marketing and infringement, domain names, cross-border technology development through electronic communication, and new business models on the Internet are but some of the pioneering opportunities and challenges raised by these new technologies.”

The 2010 edition of the ICC IP Roadmap is also available in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Portuguese.

To read ICC’s Spanish version of “Intellectual Property Roadmap for Business and Policy Makers” please click here