Background

The intellectual property rights existed since 1960s and 1970s in the Kingdom of Cambodia. A number of trademarks were also protected during that period of time such as PERTUSSIN in class 5, filing No. 1973 in the year 1966 and RIBENA in class 5 and 32, with filing No. 10318 in 1973. And then, unfortunately Cambodia fell into the internal serious crisis of civil war resulted in the abandonment of intellectual property field for almost of two decades. With Paris Peace Agreement of October 23, 1991, Cambodia began to restore its national economic infrastructure which brought back the intellectual property sector on track. As a result, the Office of Trademark was created in 1991 under the supervision of Ministry of Commerce with the tasks to register and protect trademarks with technical support and assistance from various countries, in particular, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) based in Geneva, Switzerland.