Differences in legislation concerning intellectual property rights, how they are recognized and how they are enforced among jurisdictions create challenges for IP rights applicants.
Aleading examples of this is the first-to file and first-to-use trademark registration systems being used.
In the first-to-file system, the party which filed the trademark application first is the holder of the trademark. This holds true even if the trademark was previously used by someone else or by another party, except in the case of a well-known trademark. Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the Eu, among others, use the first-to-file registration system.
In the first-to-use system, the first to actually use the trademark is the holder of the trademark even if it has not been registered. Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, the US and Canada use the first-to-use registration sytem. Read more