Synopsis
In this seminar, Professor Calboli and Ms. Li will address the topic of market integration—both in the brick-and-mortar and the digital worlds—in the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In particular, this seminar will address the relation between free movement of goods, the enforcement of national intellectual property laws, and the principle of exhaustion of intellectual property rights, with particular attention to trademark law. In the past decades, ASEAN has been endeavouring to promote economic integration between ASEAN member states. This culminated in the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the primary pillar of which is a single market consisting of five core element: free flow of goods, services, investment, capital and skilled labour. Meanwhile, the AEC signed the ASEAN IP Framework Agreement to foster closer intellectual property cooperation. However, the enforcement of exclusive trademark rights at the national level may inevitably conflict with the principle of free movement of goods within ASEAN, unless ASEAN member states consistently adopt domestic rules permitting the importation of goods that have been lawfully put in the market of other member states. Hence, so far, no harmonized rule on trademark exhaustion has been adopted, and ASEAN member states’ rules currently vary from international exhaustion to national exhaustion to no rule at all. In turn, this constitutes a barrier to effective cross-border trade between ASEAN member states and ultimately defeats the purpose of building a single market. In this seminar, Professor Calboli and Ms. Li will analyze the regional integration of ASEAN member states by looking also at comparative examples, primarily at the experiences of the European Union (EU) and other, less integrated, regional trading blocks like the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). They will conclude with specific suggestions to lay out a structured regional solution that could work for ASEAN and the building of the ASEAN single market. Ultimately, they will suggest that, both in the brick-and-mortar and digital worlds, ASEAN member states would benefit from consistently adopting a rule on international trademark exhaustion.
At the end of the seminar, ARCIALA will invite participants to celebrate the recent publication of the Volume Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Exhaustion and Parallel Imports (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), which has been edited by Professor Irene Calboli, Singapore Management University School of Law, and Professor Edward Lee, Chicago Kent College of Law.
SPEAKER & MODERATOR
Irene Calboli is Lee Kong Chian Fellow, Visiting Professor, and Deputy Director of the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia (ARCIALA), School of Law, Singapore Management University. She is also a Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law. Professor Calboli started her academic career at the University of Bologna and has held visiting positions at the King’s College London, the University of California Berkeley, the University Complutense, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Innovation and Competition. From 2012 - 2015, she was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore. Professor Calboli's scholarship focuses on the intersection between intellectual property and international trade. Her recent books include DIVERSITY IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with S. Ragavan), THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF TRADEMARK TRANSACTIONS (Edward Elgar, 2016, with Jacques de Werra), and RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY EXHAUSTION AND PARALLEL IMPORTS (Edward Elgar, 2016, with E. Lee).
SPEAKER
Yanbing Li is Yong Pung How Research Fellow at the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia, School of Law, Singapore Management University since January 2015. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in Law at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany and holds a German LL.M. degree in German Law (Deutsches Recht) from the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg, an English LL.M. degree in European Intellectual Property Law and a Chinese LL.M. degree in Civil and Commercial Law. Prior to joining SMU, she was visiting scholar at the Queen Mary University of London from January to July 2013 and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich from August 2013 to December 2014. She has published a journal article on trademark law titled “The Third Revision of Chinese Trademark Law – Analysis and Comment” (with Weijun Zhang and Lizhou Wei) in (2014) 45(5) Int’l Rev Intell Prop & Competition L 556.
Programme
2.30pm - Registration
3.00pm – Lecture
4.30pm – Discussion and Q & A
5.00pm - End of Event
Public CPD Points - 1.5 points
This programme is an Accredited CPD Activity under the SILE’s CPD Scheme. Participants who wish to claim CPD Points are reminded that they must comply strictly with the Attendance Policy set out in the CPD Guidelines. This includes signing-in on arrival and signing-out at the conclusion of the activity in the manner required by the organiser, and not being absent from the entire activity for more than 15 minutes. Participants who do not comply with the Attendance Policy will not be able to obtain CPD Points for attending the activity. Please refer to http://www.silecpdcentre.sg for more information.
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Last updated on 23 Jan 2017 .
