On Thursday, 4 April, the Latvian Patent Office (LPO) participated in Job Shadow Day organized by Junior Achievement Latvia, hosting a record number of shadows. 18 students from Riga, Carnikava, Jelgava and Sigulda had a chance to improve their knowledge of the LPO’s work and intellectual property (IP) protection.
Job Shadow Day started with a presentation by LPO Director Agris Batalauskis who explained the LPO’s main functions and lines of action to the students, who, in turn, tried to express their views of what IP is. Speaking with the young people, LPO director emphasized that it is important for everyone who creates IP to consider its registration, so that others cannot unfairly use the results of their creative efforts. "Protecting IP by registering it is just like buying an insurance policy - you will be able to prove your rights to your unique product," noted A. Batalauskis.
To make Job Shadow Day more interesting and productive, the LPO experts from the Trademarks and Industrial Designs Department and the Patent Department, told the students about different types of IP rights and their protection encouraging the young people to engage in a dialogue and ask questions. The students were eager to know about the specific skills that experts must have, their everyday work, most difficult and easiest duties, as well as about how they improve their professional knowledge.
One of the tasks of the LPO is to promote public awareness of the importance of IP and its protection, as well as to encourage citizens to buy genuine, not counterfeit, goods. Therefore, the representatives of the Department of Development and International Cooperation spoke about the public activities implemented by the LPO, including information campaigns, contests for students, participation in trade fairs and other events, lectures at schools. The young people learned about the harm caused by the production and purchase of fake goods and also about the ways to identify them. The students could exercise on the spot in distinguishing some original products from the fake ones and get explanations of the characteristics of counterfeits based on practical examples.
The informative part of the event ended with the presentation by the Industrial Property Board of Appeal on some interesting IP cases explaining why industrial property registration was cancelled in one case and maintained in another. As an exercise, the students had to tell the difference between similar candies from two different manufacturers; they had to be able to see the differences in the appearance of similar washing powder packages and perfume boxes.
In the end, each participant wrote their thoughts about the time spent at the LPO on a paper "bulb of ideas" and received a certificate of participation in Job Shadow Day.