Some thoughts on taking advice

Promoting innovation, strengthening national IP systems and developing actions to ensure the correct management and protection of IPRs leads us to this new trend of cooperation between national IP offices. To this effect a Memorandum of cooperation between the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) and the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Russian Federation) was signed on the 24th of August this year.

The memorandum which can be read here, sets up certain goals related to IP like: technical expertise in human resources; seminars and workshops targeting small and medium enterprises on both countries; and, exchange of experiences in the use of international classification systems.

I am not sure if you have noticed the latest tendency that IP offices in Latin America are pursuing, namely associations or agreements or cooperation with other IP offices. We have for example Mexico and Japan;Brazil and Portugal; Brazil and Chile; UK and Brazil and I surely I am missing some more. In any case, I believe that anything that promotes and strengthen relations between countries is a good omen but this can be troublesome if not taken with cautious. In other words, when we take advice from different sources logic indicates that we take bits and bots – the best that suits us, but sometimes mixing many ideas, do not work well together – too many cooks spoil the soup!