Golf Summit to Include IP Symposium
06 September 2012
The 2012 Asia Pacific Golf Summit (APGS) in Brunei will serve as a stage to launch a concerted effort to build awareness and to devise strategies to combat the problem of intellectual property piracy in Asia, according to a statement from the event organizers.
The symposium will be a special oneday programme that will be part of the APGS December 11-13, 2012.
“In recent months, the golf industry has awakened to a pervasive problem that’s damaging golf business enterprise throughout the world and it is a problem that clearly impedes international commerce by harming companies, reputations of nations and economic regions,” said Mike Sebastian, chief executive officer of the Asia Pacific Golf Group, the owner and producer of the Summit.
Sebastian said that the golf industry faces theft of machinery engineering, technology patents, golf course designs, new grass cultivars, the replication of designer golf apparel and accessories, counterfeiting golf clubs and other IP theft. If left unchecked, he noted, golf course operators will be inundated with counterfeit products and services; fake machinery will be working the greens and fairways of golf courses; golf course architects will have no protection whatsoever to their ideas and concepts being indiscriminately purloined and plagiarized.
Timothy Trinka, senior foreign lawyer at Seoul’s Bae Kim & Lee is spearheading the IP symposium, along with Michael Kahler, managing director of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club Asia Pacific, and James Graham Prusa, director, golf courses and laboratory, Sky 72 Golf.
