The operations and offices of the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) is to be moved to the building that houses the Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI), formerly Jampro.

“We are going to strengthen the JIPO, we are going to create a synergy between Jampro and JIPO and the first step in that direction is to have them move in physically into this building,” commerce minister Karl Samuda said at the Resource Mobilisation Meeting and presentation of Jamaica’s National Export Strategy (NES), held last Thursday at the JTI office on Trafalgar Road, Kingston. “So we are going to move them from the PCJ building and we are going to put them over there so that they can work closely with Jampro.”

Samuda, who called for greater collaboration among agencies, the private sector and government, said this move would “enable us to be stronger and it will protect our most talented”.

Samuda did not give a timeline for the planned relocation but said: “We will have a building in which when you walk in, you can be served fully. And we must move forward with that as a microcosm to deal with the collaboration which must exist within ministries and departments of the government, so that we have one voice speaking for the facilitation of the business community.”

The announcement comes as part of a larger aim to place Jamaica on the “cutting edge of competition”, according to Samuda. He called for focus to be placed on building one ‘brand’ Jamaica, instead of the many brands which now exist.

“My vision is to encourage and develop the creation of the Jamaican brand, with one symbol, one symbol that signifies efficiency,” Samuda said. “To take the words of the Colombian brand, ‘passion’. Columbia created a brand. Every single item produced in Columbia carries the brand: ‘Columbia is passion’.”

Samuda charged that every item created in Jamaica must bear a similar mark, which signifies the “totality of the elements that make up this great nation and the people in it.”

“And so we are seeking to create a ‘Jamaica brand’, so that no matter what the product says, once that brand is stamped on it, it is a brand of quality, consistency, competitiveness, absolutely reliable and credible. That’s what the brand must be.”

One of the first steps in creating such a perception is the protection of sectors that come under the direct purview of the JIP/JTI charge, among them the creative industries and intellectual property.

“Whatever we do we must be protected,” Samuda said. “Our intellectual property must be guarded and protected. It is crucial, everything here that we look at came from a mind that created it, that made it possible. It is the most valuable asset that anybody can possess and it must be jealously guarded.”

Sancia Bennett Templer, president of the JTI, said the collaboration process has already begun, with a draft document to be completed by June 2010 in time for the JMA/JEA expo. JIPO, the Scientific Research Council, the Jamaica Business Development Centre and the Bureau of Standards, in collaboration with the Jamaica Exporters’ Association, the JTI and the private sector have already begun working together on the policy document to inform

the presentation of one ‘brand’ Jamaica.

“We must be able to move forward with one Jamaica mark which says ‘this is Jamaica, these are our products’. To the extent that Columbia has ‘Colombian Passion’ maybe we need to begin to think about ‘Jamaica is bold energy’,” Bennett Templer said.

“We will be having discussions with our private sector partners, we know that the JEA has done considerable work in this regard in the past, we want to work with them and with the broader private sector to bring this forward.”