New York, NY (BBN)– Asia’s first centre for dealing with disputes related to intellectual property will open in Singapore, the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced on Tuesday.
An agreement signed by WIPO and the Singaporean government will pave the way for training and advice on procedures and provide a dedicated dispute resolution facility in the region, according to a joint communiqué.
The new centre is designed to complement the mediation work carried out by WIPO’s Geneva office, which was set up in 1994 and has handled a caseload of over 30,000 disputes since then with the amounts in dispute ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Given the rapidly expanding needs of the Asian film industry and corporate and technology sectors, Singapore’s role as an arbitration and legal hub for the intellectual property field made it an optimal location for this initiative, the WIPO added.
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