Sea Island Cotton property war with Japan settled
August 14, 2009
An 11-year trade dispute over the right to the name West Indies Sea Island Cotton has ended with the Intellectual Property
High Court of Japan ruling in favour of the grouping of four Caribbean islands, which had taken their Japanese purchasers of the raw material to court.
The former warring parties are now said to be hammering out a new deal that could resurrect the once vibrant but now ailing export activity even as the Japanese party forks over the court awarded US$10,000 in damages and unspecified legal fees of the Caribbean producers.
In a decision handed down in July, the West Indies Sea Island Cotton Association comprising Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Nevis, had its intellectual property right to the name endorsed, and West Indies Sea Island Cotton Club of Japan ordered to return to the Caribbean group, the trademark it had registered as its own.
Re-registration
"It (the trademark) was registered in Japan, but when it expired instead of giving us time to re-register ourselves they (West Indies Sea Island Cotton Club of Japan) went ahead and registered it themselves and refused to pass it back to us," Vitus Evans, chief executive officer of Jamaica Agricultural Development Foundation (JADF), the entity leading the development of West Indies Sea Island Cotton in Jamaica, told the Financial Gleaner.
Following failed negotiations from 1998, the Caribbean group went to court two years ago.
Evans said the legal battle cost the association a total US$20,000, but according to industry representatives, the cost in terms of lost market share has also been significant, though no actual figures were provided. With the dispute now settled, Jamaica and the rest of the regional growers have the task of rebuilding vital markets lost as a result of the legal tussle....
Author: Dionne Rose
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
