Asked by the White House to Present "The Value of IP in Attracting Financing" at APEC

Last year, I was invited by the White House Office of the US Trade Representative to present at the Third APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM3),  "Workshop on the Role of Trade Secrets for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Attracting Financing and Integrating into Global Supply Chains" Cebu, Philippines 22 August 2015.

APEC Intellectual Property Experts Group Meeting room, Cebu, Philippines

The meeting went well, and it felt like the the participating countries had a genuine desire to move the ball forward on enabling global business growth. The event almost had an Olympic feel - to the point that when my flight was delayed to a 1 AM arrival from Tokyo, the Philippine hosts still had the welcome staff of about about 50 waiting and a shuttle van with police escorts (front and back) ready and waiting as well.

Police Escort From Airport to Hotel in Cebu, Philippines

As for the meeting itself, there is a lot of complexity in these topics, but there are three fundamental points which - in my experience - are critical to creating favorable business environments, and seemed to make sense to the representatives:

I was able to speak to each of those points for about an hour and got some thoughtful follow-up questions from a number of the delegates. Helping to inform and advise these Asia Pacific economies on their IP policies, in a way that is going to help both foreign and domestic business grow, is a great privilege and one which hopefully will show meaningful results in the near term.