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As American businesses expand into international markets, they have a unique ally when it comes
to matters of intellectual property, the United States Patent and Trademark office's Intellectual
Property Attaché Program.
IP attachés provide a number of valuable services, they advocate to improve intellectual
property systems primarily, and that's done in three ways. The first is by meeting with
senior host government officials to explain why changes and improvements to policies,
laws, and regulations would be advantageous to that country. The second is, they train
host government officials on intellectual property issues. This includes judges, prosecutors,
patent examiners, trademark examining attorneys, and police. This training helps them to become
more effective at what these officers do. And the third prong of this is; they reach
out to the public through public awareness programs to help them to understand US perspectives
on intellectual property, why intellectual property is important, why it should be protected,
and why it should be respected and enforced.
Our relationship with the IP attachés that we've worked with has been tremendous. They
have helped us understand issues very quickly, helped us to prioritize our work, helped our
members understand how to come into those countries and do business in IP. Without them
there, it would take a lot longer for us to be able to filter through the issues that
are coming out of the patent offices and the governments.
The IP Attaché Program serves businesses of all sizes. We work with sole practitioners,
independent vendors, small businesses, to even multinational companies as well.
American products are very popular around the world, and American ingenuity is really
under attack. Whether it's cyber theft, whether it's trade secret theft, there's just a myriad
of ways in which foreign bad actors are causing a lot of losses to the American economy,
really in all areas. And so that's why an attaché can be critically important and help a company
navigate a foreign market
From IP protection to preventing online piracy, to licensing
issues and combating counterfeit trade, the IP attachés provide assistance across a broad
range of intellectual property.
A business can contact an IP attaché really at any time, they can contact an attaché
before they're thinking about going into that foreign market, or once they're actually in
that foreign market and they're having challenges. They can contact us at any time.
Talking with the attachés, understanding what protections are available in a given
country, and importantly what are not, is crucial to being able to access and market
in a safe way, because the last thing we want is to see our companies go into a market prematurely,
put their intellectual property at risk, often in a joint venture where maybe there hasn't
been the proper due diligence, and to lose the rights to their intellectual property
in that market.
The services that we provide to rights holders and businesses do actually go a little bit
beyond just intellectual property. We are the officers that represent the United States
government overseas, and so of course our core mission is to discuss intellectual property,
but we also encompass questions about the economic environment, what it's like to do
business in China, what are the cultural or governmental differences, or how does one
access a government agency, that sort of thing.
The IP attachés provide information about the intellectual property landscape, both
with regard to how to protect intellectual property, and also how to enforce intellectual
property. Our expertise is indeed in the intellectual property field.
To learn more about the IP Attaché Program, or for IP Attaché contact information, please visit
www.uspto.gov/ipattache.
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