Looking at the two signs side-by-side at the Road Town Ferry Terminal, it’s easy for visitors to get confused which company is which.
On the left, a blue-and-yellow sign for Tortola Fast Ferry, owned by the firm Smith’s Ferry Limited, appears next to its rival on the right: Road Town Fast Ferry, owned by Caribbean Marine Excursions Inc.
With the House of Assembly’s passage Thursday of legislation to modernise a century-old trademarks regime, businesses that provide a service to consumers will be able to trademark their names in the Virgin Islands for the first time, according to intellectual property attorneys familiar with the new law.
IP protections
The legislation will protect businesses’ rights to their names, brands and other intellectual property, protections that are useful for the hundreds of thousands of foreign companies incorporated here as well as local businesses, Jamal Smith, the founder of the law firm ThortonSmith, said Monday.
“The international aspects will definitely drive revenues, but the real benefit happens to be local — every business locally will want to protect their intellectual property,” he said.
Typically, he added, the first company or person to register a mark has the right to it, but the application to register has be made in the Gazette and competing claims can be lodged with the Registry of Corporate Affairs.
Mr. Smith said that intellectual property represents major value to most corporations, and firms often establish separate holding companies just for their intellectual property rights.
“You can do all kinds of things with it. Charge, go to the bank, get loans on your intellectual property assets — anything you can do just like a person holds their land with a company, they can hold their intellectual property with a company as well,” he said.
Service trademarks
He added that given the VI economy’s dependence on services, the old legislation is inadequate.
“There’s no provision for service marks to be registered and we’re a service-oriented jurisdiction. No hotel, no trust company, no law firm, nobody in the service industry can register their trademark,” he said.
Changes are long overdue because the current legislation is based on an 1887 law, Leonard Birmingham, a partner at Harneys, said Tuesday.
“The ability to register all sorts of things — smells, sounds, tastes — is really a quantum leap forward,” he said of the new law.
The bill will protect “well-known trademarks,” simplify the transfer of trademarks, and detail procedures and circumstances under which the registrar of corporate affairs can deny a trademark, he said.
“The law was well overdue for an update,” he added. “It’s certainly brought the law into the 21st Century.”
The trademarks bill passed the HOA Tuesday with no debate, similar to four other bills that will update the territory’s laws relating to trusts.
The bills — amendments to the Trust Corporation Act, the Banks and Trust Companies Act, the Trustee Amendment Act and the Virgin Islands Special Trusts Act— make a variety of administrative changes to correct deficiencies and make improvements on existing trust law.
They’re “very positive changes” and enhance an important sub-sector of the territory’s financial services industry, Mr. Birmingham said.
“All serious financial services jurisdictions have sensible trust laws not just because of the typical high-net-worth individual people think they are relevant for, but they’re relevant for all sorts of structuring in terms of securitisation, aircraft finances,” he said. “They’re a necessary cog in the wheel of financial services.”
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