Sea Island Cotton property war with Japan settled
Published: Friday | August 14, 2009
An 11-year trade dispute over the right to the name West Indies Sea Island Cotton has ended with the Intellectual Property High Court of Japan ruling in favour of the grouping of four Caribbean islands, which had taken their Japanese purchasers of the raw material to court.
The former warring parties are now said to be hammering out a new deal that could resurrect the once vibrant but now ailing export activity even as the Japanese party forks over the court awarded US$10,000 in damages and unspecified legal fees of the Caribbean producers.
In a decision handed down in July, the West Indies Sea Island Cotton Association comprising Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Nevis, had its
Re-registration
"It (the trademark) was registered in Japan, but when it expired instead of giving us time to re-register ourselves they (West Indies Sea Island Cotton Club of Japan) went ahead and registered it themselves and refused to pass it back to us," Vitus Evans, chief executive officer of Jamaica Agricultural Development Foundation (JADF), the entity leading the development of West Indies Sea Island Cotton in Jamaica, told the Financial Gleaner.
Following failed negotiations from 1998, the Caribbean group went to court two years ago.
"We took a deliberate decision that we are not going to supply them whilst this matter was still outstanding. So that took away a major part of our market and we reduced production," Evans explained.
He said prior to the dispute Jamaica exported 120,000 pounds of cotton lint per year from 600 acres of crop. At the height of the battle, production was deliberately scaled back to 40,000 pounds from 200 acres and just two of 17 farmers in St Ann and St Catherine.
The fall-out with Japan, once the major market has forced regional growers to look elsewhere, with the United States and European countries of Italy, the United Kingdom and Switzerland now among the leading buyers.
Different arrangement
"We are now entering into a different arrangement with the Japanese. We are in negotiation with them as to how we are going to deal with them in the future and they have expressed an interest in expanding their own markets and expect that we will grow more cotton to supply them," according to Evans.
West Indies Sea Island Cotton is grown only in the Caribbean with only a handful of countries producing the material.
The variety is one of the most expensive cotton in the world fetching up to US$10 per pound of lint. Last year Jamaica earned US$480,000 or J$42.6 million from the export of cotton lint.
With the dispute behind them, sea island cotton farmers here are projecting to put 800 acres into production by June next year by involving more farmers in the cultivation.
Meanwhile, the cotton growers are looking to the prospect of a partnership with Chinese buyers to boost production and sales while creating jobs.
Last week, a Chinese delegation, which visited the offices of the country's trade promotions agency, Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI), invited Evans to discuss the possibilities.
Strong advantage
"We feel that China brings an added advantage in terms of having the same technology and being able to actually produce the fine garments as they do in Europe but at a cheaper cost," Evans said.
Endorsing the move, JTI president, Robert Gregory, said the real profitability of the product was in the areas of intellectual property, marketing and distribution.
"We have the opportunity to move up from commodity producers to value-added producers in the design, in the intellectual property, in the marketing and distribution," Gregory said.
"It is quite possible to outsource the manufacturing to China and we control the lion's share of the value, which is based in intellectual property and the marketing and distribution."
