Trade Fair Monitoring

Trade fairs are exhibitions, used by various companies and organizations as a platform organized
to showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, for learning more about the
industry, finding business partners with whom they can trade, and examining the latest market
trends and opportunities. Trade fairs are considered to be the perfect place for budding
enterprises for promoting their enterprise. However, from the perspective of Intellectual
Property, it can turn out to be a hotbed for potentially infringing products, ideas, and services.
Therefore it is recommended to preserve and defend the intangible assets.

Trade fairs provide an opportunity in assessing opinions from clients and examining market
potential. However, it is important to keep something's in mind when visiting a trade fair. Trade
fairs provide intellectual property (IP) owners with the opportunity to present their innovations
and ideas to potential business partners and customers and allow them to learn from and
collaborate with other innovators. There is, however, a risk, in that disclosing your innovations to
the public leaves you exposed to third parties copying and infringing on your IP. When
exhibiting at trade fairs, there are two very important factors to consider in relation to your IP:
geography and timing. Trade fairs are made up of local and foreign exhibitors and visitors.
Hence, when it comes to trade fairs, owners of IP, being the exhibitors, are disclosing their IP to
a much wider audience. Therefore, Trade Fair Monitoring comes into play. It is important to
keep a watch on all the participating enterprises for tracking-down any sort of infringing or
counterfeiting activities, products or services

The WFTO is the home of Fair Trade Enterprises. Fair trade is not regulated by the government,
however, a number of private organizations have developed fair trade monitoring systems. One
of the largest fair trade monitoring organizations worldwide is Fair trade International (FLO).
There are various other organizations that offer services from monitoring, researching to
displaying the correct data. Trade fairs are hotbeds for potentially infringing products, ideas and
services to gain momentum through exposure to potential consumer/clients. It becomes
important in the trade fairs for extracting crucial information from such forums. Recently, a trade
fair was organized in Chicago collaborating with EEPC India. Trade fair monitoring includes
collecting promotional material such as Brochure, price list etc. Collecting evidences of samples
of the infringing products and Clicking Photographs and action is taken against the persons
infringing the rights and violating rules and regulations.