Speaker: Dr Natalie Corthésy
Room: C305
Abstract
Nation-branding strategies have vested country names with a valuable, intangible interest protectable under the multilateral intellectual property (IP) framework. However, this framework currently provides insufficient defences against the unauthorised exploitation of country names as a commercial springboard.
This raises the question of what a nation brand is, and what is its correlation to IP. The extent to which the use of country names in commerce is cloaked with the trappings of an exclusive property right will be examined.
Free riding on national brands in international commerce to promote goods and services that have no link to the country name with which they are co-branded is the nuisance that underpins the issue. The author will determine whether this is a legal-political issue of sovereignty or a legal-economic issue of property, or both.
About the speaker
Dr Natalie Corthésy holds a PhD from CCLS Queen Mary University of London and is qualified to practice as an attorney-at-law in Jamaica. She is Associate Dean at Mona Law, The University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and former Programme Coordinator of the faculty’s LLM in IP and the Cultural and Creative Industries.
Her 2017 article, Trademarks, Country Names and Misappropriation of National Identity, won INTA’s Ladas Memorial Award and The UWI Mona Principal’s 2019 Research Days Award for the research project with the greatest business/economic/development impact. Since 2021, Natalie has been co-investigator on a joint City University London – UWI Mona research project team, funded by the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund, studying Jamaican Geographical Indications, notably Jamaica Cannabis.
Prior to academia, Natalie served in Jamaica’s civil service for 10 years as Legal Officer at Ministry of Labour, Director of Copyright and Related Rights at the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, and Director of Entertainment Policy at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture.
Natalie has authored several peer reviewed academic works including: Corthésy, N International Intellectual Property Protection of Country Names - Balancing Nation Brands and Geographic Commons In a Competitive Global Marketplace, Ian Randle Publishers (forthcoming 2023); Kodilinye, G. and Corthésy, N Commonwealth Caribbean Tort Law 6 th Edition, Routledge Taylor Francis (2022); Corthésy, N and Harris-Roper, CA Commonwealth Caribbean Employment and Labour Law, Routledge Taylor Francis (2014).
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