Want to get some tears to my eyes, let me see some young person sauntering down the mall with an over-sized T shirt with Bob Marley fully emblazoned across the front. I am saddened because I usually see no sign of a trademark. That same person may have a Nike cap and guest what, the Trademark is there!
Recently I went to the Jamaica Intellectual property office site and saw another sad story. The headline said it all:
Bob Marley family loses copyright fight.
Yes , folks it’s full time we put a spotlight on one our most underdeveloped asset, our intellectual property assets. Patents, Trademarks, and copyrights are a measure of wealth creation capacity.
These elements are the rocks we need to place in our slingshot to defeat the many menacing socio-economic giants that haunt our possibilities.
First let me describe these precious rocks.
Patent: legal protection of a new, useful process, machine, article of manufacture, industrial desgn, or asexually reproduced plant.
Trademarks: is a word , phrase, symbol, design or the combination of these elements . A trademark is used to identify and distinguish one source of goods from another.
Copyright: is a form of protection to the authors of original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic for a fixed time period.
I could not help thinking about Jamaica’s possibilities in creating new revenue streams by applying an additional focus and leverage of its intellectual property possibilities. Agriculture offers lots of momentum in creating new foreign exchange mojo through reduction in imports of food products, and exports. However, there is clearly room to add a dose of intellectual property to multiply the revenue possibilities.
To make my case, let me choose just one food company that get raw products from Jamaica , and add their sprinkling of IP and wah la, a world class winner.
The Hershey Company is a $US12B company that hires 13 thousand folks. They manufacture chocolate and sugar confectionery products. The Company manufactures, markets, sells and distributes various package types of these products in more than 80 brand names. While we are being nostalgic about granny’s coco tea, they are making a fortune!
Think of the many ways they brand themselves.
I am tired of hearing how hot our peppers are and how divine our jerk sauces are. If the French and Italian can have a salad dressing, how about the Jamaican dressing?
How will this happen? It will take an adoption of a new mind set for intellectual property.It is thinking beyond just delivering a product in a functional form with a label. Hopefully the wise will catch the hints.
Let’s stop thinking commodity, and practice adding the ever important intellectual-additive. Let’s stop preaching to the choir and add a new monetary value to our product offerings by adding the new ingredient of intellectual property in a advanced way to let the world wonder admiringly about our possibility.
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein
