For everyone reading this, it should be Thursday (China time), let’s say sometime late in the evening.

In reality, for me, it is Wednesay early morning, and I am still wasting time blogging while my wife keeps reminding me every 45 minutes that I should pack my suitcase for my trip to Amsterdam that leaves in 9 hours.

But let’s pretend it’s Thursday in the Netherlands. Let’s further pretend that I just spent a lovely day in The Hague, specifically at the Patent Office, participating in a China IP event for SMEs.

Lots of great questions, very knowledgeable and interesting speakers, and the lunch! Well, what can I say about that lunch, it was amazing. I never knew that you could be so creative with french fries and salted herring. It was like a party was going on in my mouth, a party with onions and mayo.

So what will be was my advice to all those happy Dutch SME reps? I will stick stuck to the basics:

1. Register your IP as early as possible.
2. Don’t sacrifice IP protection for speed (i.e. don’t jump into the market before you take care of your IP).
3. Have a well-crafted, reasonable, and feasible China IP plan in place before anything goes wrong.
4. Do your homework (keep your eyes open for infringement and listen to your distributors and agents).
5. Check up frequently on licensees, distributors, agents, and manufacturers.
6. Avail yourself of all reasonable enforcement measures (after doing a cost benefit analysis of course), but understand the obstacles involved.

That’s barebones. One could list 100 points, but this was a short conference.

More on this later, perhaps sometime after I’ve actually been to the conference. It might make this a bit more intelligible.