Business: Through trademark, Tecg Gants keep Jamaica ahead of the product curve

Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.

It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle. These include Jamaica, Tonga, Iceland, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago—places where trademark authorities don’t maintain easily searchable databases.

The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.

In the meantime, though, the provision prevents competitors from guessing at a firm’s product plans from public filings. “Competitors could search, ‘What has Apple filed for? What are they thinking about?'” says Nehal Madhani of legal-software provider Alt Legal, who has researched the issue. Think of it as arbitraging global intellectual-property laws.

The filings made overseas aren’t, of course, actually secret—they’re just not easy to access if you can’t go in person. For instance, the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office allows visitors to search filings in person at its office in Kingston. People can also ask the office to search filings for them, but a Jamaican address is required to receive the results, and the process takes three weeks. A lawyer in Jamaica, however, can be appointed to perform the search, the office told Quartz. It said it has no current plans to put its filings database online. Alt Legal compiled a list of 65 other countries with offline trademark databases like Jamaica’s.

Each tech company seems to prefer a particular country for its trademark applications. We compiled registration data going back to 2010 on Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and charted the countries where they first filed trademarks:

Film: FLOW Keeps the show going for TT Film Fest

TELECOMS provider Flow has committed to sponsoring the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (ttff) for the next three years until 2019.

Cindy-Ann Gatt, director of marketing for Flow, made the announcement at the launch of the Film Festival which took place at the Hyatt Regency recently. Flow is the presenting sponsor for the ttff which runs for one week this year, at MovieTowne and other locations from today to September 27.

This is the 11th year of the ttff and Flow has been involved since 2008 as the top sponsor, providing the necessary funding for the operational costs of the festival. Flow also sponsors the People's Choice Awards which cover Best Feature Film – Narrative, Best Feature Film – Documentary and Best Short Film.

Over the years, Flow's partnership with the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival has seen movies from the Film Festival air on HBO and Flow also airs local movies on Flow's Video on Demand option, with 100 per cent of the proceeds going to the creators of the film.

This year Flow, the leading telecoms provider, will be hosting a workshop for participating filmmakers explaining how they can use and go about accessing Video on Demand to show their work, whether it's a full-length feature or a film short.

At the launch Cindy-Ann Gatt explained, “It's about supporting excellence in Caribbean Arts and Caribbean content. At Flow we see the Film Festival as a tool that ensures that we have a place at the table concerning film. The fact is we in the Caribbean and specifically Trinidad and Tobago cannot wait for others to tell our stories. It doesn't work like that. We have to empower ourselves to insert our narrative into the film industry.

“The ttff is one way to ensure that our films have a place to go.”

The theme of this year's ttff is Good to Go and tickets are available all venues prior to the screening of the film. It is also a reflection of the company's investment in the development of local and Caribbean content, said Gatt.

Literature: Bocas entries Open for 2017

The 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the latest round of the region’s most prestigious literary award, is now open for entries. Sponsored by One Caribbean Media, the prize, now in its seventh year, includes a cash award of US$10,000 for the overall winner and US$3,000 each for two genre category winners.

With past winners including both eminent established authors and talented newcomers, the OCM Bocas Prize is coveted by Caribbean writers all over the world, who qualify by being of Caribbean birth or citizenship.

The cross-genre prize is judged in three categories: poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. The 2017 Prize is open to books published in the calendar year 2016. The overall winner is selected from the three category winners.

Chairing the distinguished panel of Caribbean and international judges is the celebrated Jamaican literary scholar and poet Professor Edward Baugh, who is joined by ten other internationally based writers, academics, and publishing professionals.

There are two deadlines for submissions: 10 November, 2016, and 11 January, 2017, depending on the publication date of an eligible title.

In the 2016 round, the short fiction collection The Pain Tree by Olive Senior was the overall winner of the OCM Bocas Prize. Other winners in past years have included St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace.

“This cross-genre prize lines up the best talents, old and new, allowing them to rub shoulders as no other prize does. We are pleased that each year we can signal to the reading public the very finest of what’s on offer from Caribbean writers and help in promoting the work of our wordsmiths, wherever they may live,” says Marina Salandy-Brown, founder and director of the Bocas Lit Fest, the NGO behind the Prize and three annual literary festivals in Trinidad and Tobago.

The 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest runs from 26 to 30 April, 2017, at the National Library and the adjacent Old Fire Station, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Title sponsor is the National Gas Company, lead sponsor is First Citizens, OCM is a main sponsor.

Arts: Caribbean soul, with verse

Anthony Joseph – Caribbean Roots, review: ‘Provokes and questions through words and music’ by lisaparavisini A review by Simon Broughton for The Evening Standard. British- Trinidadian Anthony Joseph has created a sort of Caribbean Allstars orchestra to accompany his spoken poetry on Caribbean Roots. It’s the saxes of Shabaka Hutchings and Jason Yarde and steel pans of Andy Narell that really ring out as the music absorbs influences from Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti and the French Antilles. Slinger is a tribute to the great Calypsonian Mighty Sparrow, while Our History is about being tied to the land and revolution. The title track says “set yourself in the soil, put your head in the sky of these Caribbean Roots”. Joseph’s poetry is thoughtful and avoids slogans. He just provokes and questions through words and music.

Sport/Culture: Saving Rodney's Medals

Before T&T’s first Olympic medalist Rodney Wilkes died, he wanted his medals to be displayed at San Fernando’s City Hall so that future generations could learn of his feats.

But with bids on his Helsinki 1952 bronze medal for weightlifting closed off on eBay yesterday it is uncertain whether Wilkes’ wish will ever come true. Up to yesterday afternoon, there were 11 bids over the US$30,500 asking price. Last week, Wilkes’ daughter Grace Wilkes-Worsley told the T&T Guardian that her father wanted the medals returned and her brother tried three times to have them returned by late historian Louis B Homer.

However, it was never done and she said the auction has caused great distress to her family. Former local government minister Marlene Coudray has described the silence from officials of the San Fernando City Corporation on the issue as appalling since Wilkes had first given them the medal so it could be used in a historic exhibition during City Day celebrations in 2011.

Coudray, who is also a former San Fernando Mayor, said the bronze and silver medals which Wilkes won in the 1948 Olympics in London, were loaned to Homer for display in a museum at his home in San Fernando during a visit by a delegation from Martinique.

“Mr Wilkes told me he wanted to keep his medals on display because I had done a cabinet in the lobby with a lot of stuff in it. Mr Wilkes told me that having it at home served no purpose and he did not have a problem with the city keeping it because, ironically, he knew it would be safe and the people of San Fernando and others would be able to come into City Hall and look at them,” Coudray said.

She explained that because San Fernando is twinned with the town of Trinite in Martinique, a group called Friends of San Fernando had invited a delegation to view the display. However, the medals and several other artefacts from City Hall were never returned by Homer and after he died in August 2013, no one knew what became of the collection. [. . .]

Literary Arts: Commonwealth shortlist revealed

The 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize has just announced its shortlist. This year it attracted nearly 4000 entries – a record number. The judging panel, comprised of six acclaimed writers–Leila Aboulela, Fred D’Aguiar, Marina Endicott, Witi Ihimaera, Bina Shah and chair Romesh Guneseker–chose twenty-two stories (from eleven countries) that reflect the breadth and quality of writing in the Commonwealth today. The judges will announce the five regional winners drawn from the shortlist on April 28. The shortlist includes four Caribbean writers: Alecia McKenzie, K Jared Hosein, Toodesh Ramesar, and Darren Doyle.

Here are the four writers with a passage from their work:

Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican writer, artist and journalist. Her books include the short story collections Satellite City and Stories from Yard, and the novel Sweetheart. Alecia has participated in art exhibitions in New York, London and other cities, and, as a journalist, has reported on human rights, gender, development, culture and the environment. She is the founder and editor of Southern World Arts News (SWAN), an online site that provides information about the arts.

Toodesh Ramesar is a writer and literature teacher from Trinidad and Tobago. He has won several prizes including the 2005 Derek Walcott and University of West Indies Prize for Poetry. His work has been featured in the collection Six Trinidadian Poets and the literary journal The Caribbean Writer.

Darren Doyle was born in Trinidad and Tobago. He has a Journalism BA from the University of Sheffield, and feels most at home writing, and maintaining the blog,Worksp_ce, at www.workspce.com. He is currently working on getting his first novel published.

Kevin Jared Hosein is a poet, writer and science teacher in Trinidad and Tobago and a graduate of the University of the West Indies. He illustrated and published a book for younger audiences, Littletown Secrets, in 2013. His short stories have been featured in Caribbean anthologies such as Pepperpot and Jewels of the Caribbean.

For full description and list of writes, see http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/2015-commonwealth-short-story-prize-shortlist/

Books: Nine from Five for Bocas Long list

Authors from five territories have made the longlist for the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media.

The Prize longlist includes three genre categories: poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. The winners in each category will be announced on 1 April, and the Prize will be presented on Saturday 2 May, during the fifth annual NGC Bocas Lit fest in Port of Spain. The overall winner will receive a US$10,000 award with smaller awards for the other winners.

The 2015 OCM Bocas Prize Longlist:

POETRY

Sounding Ground, by Vladimir Lucien (Peepal Tree Press)
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, by Kei Miller (Carcanet)
The Merchant of Feathers, by Tanya Shirley (Peepal Tree Press)

FICTION

A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James (Riverhead)
House of Ashes, by Monique Roffey (Simon and Schuster)
Land of Love and Drowning, by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead)

NON-FICTION

Not for Everyday Use, by Elizabeth Nunez (Akashic)
King Short Shirt: Nobody Go Run Me, by Dorbrene E. O’Marde (Hansib)
Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, by Olive Senior (UWI Press)