This advice came from Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Business, Christopher Sinckler, on Wednesday, when he addressed the opening of a one-day seminar on “Trade in services: Key Emerging Issues”.

He told participants that the Caribbean possessed a large cadre of highly qualified and skilled persons, who had the capacity to produce valuable intellectual property, especially in the provision of services.

“However, we must be mindful not to let the value of our creations be diluted due to the lack of intellectual property rights,” he cautioned.

Citing several examples of products designed and created in the region for which the intellectual property rights are now maintained elsewhere, for example the case of Trinidad and Tobago, which had to challenge the United States in its effort to claim the rights to the steel pan, the Minister stated that:

“Our region ought never to suffer from the inability to meet the costs associated with the production of our own creations. This is too critical an area of activity in our own economic development thrust…we are duty bound under the provisions of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property rights to protect other persons’ creations in our domestic markets. We should do the same for ourselves.”

He expressed the view that intellectual property rights were even more critical when it came to the service industry, since, he said, they played an important role in income generation throughout the sectors.