MAY 2008
IP regimes ranked worldwide
A new Index, developed by Taylor Wessing, rates IP protection in different countries. Roland Mallinson introduces the Index and examines some of the findings
| One-minute read |
| As IP work becomes global, practitioners inevitably want to compare protection in different markets. This encourages best practice and harmonization, but until now a single point of reference has been lacking. The Global IP Index, launched this month, rectifies that by rating 22 jurisdictions based on a mixture of objective statistics and subjective reports from practitioners. The results make interesting reading, and enable the 22 markets to be ranked in five tiers. The US, UK and Germany consistently perform strongest while the BRIC countries rank lowest in all areas of IP – with similar results when patents, trade marks and copyright are examined separately. Overall, common law systems perform well, while Asian countries perform poorly and there are wide divergences in Europe. The results also indicate which aspects of national IP systems are most important, and valued, by professionals. |
The consequence of the internet, knowledge-based economies, low-cost travel and market globalization is that we increasingly find ourselves involved with IP regimes other than our own. More IP professionals are getting at least indirect experience of registering, attacking, licensing and enforcing IP rights in third countries. In doing so, they inevitably make comparisons of the IP regimes, assessing their key attributes of relative speed, cost, independence and certainly of outcomes. Such comparisons help mutual understanding of and respect for the virtues and limitations of each other's IP regimes. Ideally, this should be applied for the benefit of all by encouraging best practice and harmonization. To facilitate this, we offer a simple, single, up-to-date point of reference by which the IP regimes of different jurisdictions can be assessed.
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