The meeting, chaired by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (NOIP), drew more than 100 delegates from the 21 APEC member economies.

The agenda surrounds the common targets of the APEC cooperation in IP, including increasing dialogue about IP policies, and discussing measures to promote the effectiveness of the IP protection system and to implement the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of IP.

The IPEG 44 looked into efforts to ensure the effective implementation of APEC Collective Action Plan on IP to achieve the Bogor Goals on trade and investment liberalisation by 2020. 

It also discussed the development of IP manpower for developing and underdeveloped economies, the enhancement of communication activities to raise public awareness of IP, and the encouragement of using, exploiting and commercialising IP.

On the sidelines of the event, the Vietnamese delegation had bilateral meetings with some APEC economies like the Republic of Korea and the US to discuss IP cooperation plans.

The IPEG 44 is scheduled to wrap up on February 19.

Also on February 18, seven other meetings and workshops took place in Nha Trang, touching upon such issues as emergency response capacity, illegal logging, policy cooperation in science-technology, and promoting the social commitment to corruption fight.

They were activities on the first day within the framework of the first APEC Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM 1), which will last until March 3.

APEC Vietnam 2017 takes the theme of “Creating New Dynamism, Fostering A Shared Future”. Vietnam joined APEC in 1998 and hosted APEC events in 2006.