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This week our conversation takes us on an international journey, more or less. András Jókúti is an intellectual property lawyer with domestic and international experience in public IP policy and university technology transfer. He is the former Director-General for Legal Affairs of the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, and he is a former Fulbright Scholar. András studied intellectual property and obtained his LL.M. in intellectual property law from The George Washington University. Thereafter, András worked with the Budapest University of Technology and Economics to strengthen its IP and technology transfer operations. And since January 2022, he has served as the Director of the Patent and Technology Law Division at the World Intellectual Property Organization. András came to the United States last week to speak at IPWatchdog LIVE 2024, which was hosted at the Renaissance Capitol View hotel in Arlington, Virginia.
During our wide-ranging conversation we discuss a number of issues, from standard essential patents to artificial intelligence, and trade secrets too, which is what brought him to IPWatchdog, to discuss the new WIPO trade secret guide, published in July 2024.
With respect to standard essential patents, Jókúti explains that SEPs are an important area, and earlier this year WIPO put out a new standard essential patent strategy, and is taking steps to forward that strategy, although he tells us he does not think the time is ripe for any kind of norm-setting activity or legislative convergence, but that WIPO is trying to work “to create an environment where the transparency can be enhanced through means of putting out studies, collections, enhancing the patent scope database with essentiality declarations, and all those measures that contribute to the conversation and can indirectly result in some kind of convergence in understanding.”
“Most of the issues are sorted out through either litigation or ADR, or through some market-driven mechanisms,” Jókúti said. “So, WIPO is not trying to step up and say, let’s have a treaty on standard essential patents. That would never work. The approaches between the jurisdictions, the policies might be very, very different from each other.”
We also discussed how WIPO always attempts to remain neutral, with Jókúti pointing out that neutrality may be more important when it is consulting with countries considering the adoption of intellectual property laws.
“What we are trying to do there is to highlight what an IP system can do for the economy, but we are not pushing on them any type of IP system that has any agenda behind it,” Jókúti explains. “So, we do not have a stake in what kind of a patent system does one small island country have or another country in another region has. It’s more about making them aware of the policy options that they have and let them make their own policy choices, but in an informed manner. So we are trying to explain to them what one path means over another one.”
Over the last several years WIPO has become involved with trade secrets and innovation, with the first big involvement coming in 2019 as. Part of symposium on trade secrets. And in more recent months, WIPO has just published a trade secret guide, which “is something that really fills a gap because there hasn’t been any comprehensive WIPO publication apart from the general information on trade secrets on the website that really addressed specific issues in a detailed manner relating to trade secret protection,” Jókúti explained.
“If you think patent law is diverse, then trade secret law is even more diverse,” Jókúti said when discussing just how diverse trade secret laws are around the world. “There are very, very different starting points in every jurisdiction where trade secret protection is actually rooted. Sometimes it’s unfair competition. Sometimes it’s IP law, per se. Sometimes it’s contractual. Sometimes it’s towards breach of confidence. So, the roots are different, but the end result is similar with many, many, many nuances and variations.”
To hear this entire conversation, listen wherever you get your podcasts (links here) or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout.