Role Of Intellectual Property Protection In Jamaica's Transformation: From Crown Colony To Middle-Age Independent

Presentation held at Legal History and Empires: Perspectives From The Colonized Conference, 2018 Faculty of Law | Cave Hill Campus |UWI | July 13, 2018

Introduction

After nearly fifty-six (56) years of independence from Great Britain Jamaica's Intellectual Property (IP) Laws have undergone considerable changes including some stark departures from English Law particularly in the realms of copyright and passing off.

The factors of change have been largely external consequent to Jamaica's entry into the international IP legal framework governed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (now a member for 40 years) and the country's participation in a network of treaties and agreements in the global trade arena since the mid 1990s (the WTO TRIPS Agreement and the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EC and CARIFORUM (EPA)).

There has also been a ground-swell of local lobby groups advocating for indigenous policies and legislative amendments that are better suited to the national context and some judicial decisions that have tread uncharted territory in attempts to break new ground.

Even with the evolution in the laws, some of which now feature uniquely Jamaican markers, imprints of the Imperial Statutes on Jamaica's IP regime are still discernible throughout.

While this is particularly stark in relation to Patents and Designs...