Poor branding culture remains the biggest challenge facing the Intellectual Property system in the country. As a result, Bhutanese products are not able to enter the international market.
Professionals from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are in the country to help improve and facilitate the intellectual property environment through brands and design over a five-year project.
Bringing in all the relevant stakeholders for the first time, the workshop encourages government agencies to work as one with a mission to improve branding and effectively using intellectual property system to strengthen business competitiveness.
The workshop is a follow up to the preliminary study conducted by WIPO in November last year.
As per the study, Bhutan has enormous opportunities in terms of branding.
“You already have a nation brand Bhutan. It is recognized globally, so I think it’s a good place to be,” Andrew Ong from WIPO said.
“Now, we only need to trickle down the entire brand and extend it to specific products and services whether it’s in the area of herbal medicines, tourism, water and many other industries. So, you are in a good place.”
Brands or trademarks are powerful symbols of identification in the market place that create tremendous value for organization or businesses.
Of over 17,000 total trademarks filed with the IP department as of today, national applicants filed only 204 applications.
As per records with the Department of Intellectual Property, international trademark filing system accounts for majority of the revenue generated.
Over the course of the five-year project, WIPO will help create a hub to provide advisory services to local business community and develop branding strategies for Bhutan.
“The program in enabling intellectual property environment is one that engages stakeholders, businesses, government and civil society to look at brand as a strategy for national development,” Andrew Ong said.
“So, I think this is one area where we can help and cooperate with Bhutan at various levels. At the end of the project, we tangibly hope to publish, let’s say, a hundred Bhutan trademarks that has been benefited from this endeavour and then hopefully success stories can encourage even more businesses to engage in brand.”
Challenges, such as lack of awareness on branding and designs, limited external market, stiff competition from regional market and absence of experts among others, will all be addressed through this five-year project.
