TEN years ago, expectant moms had to make do with sailor-collared maternity tops, jeans of their husbands (as they would fit a growing belly) and blah inch-high shoes to go out. If one had a little baby, the mom would have to bring along bottles of milk (whether formula or breast milk expressed at home) since it would be such a hassle to do breast-feeding outside the home. The huge stroller would have to be brought along, since it would be too tiring to carry the baby all the time.

But now there’s a whole lot of fashionable maternity clothes out there. Breast-feeding in public is a cinch with nursing bibs that allow babies to nurse discreetly. There’s even a sling moms can wear so they can carry their babies well for long periods of time.

And the products for moms and infants have more than doubled over recent years: belly belts (maternity pants extenders), nappy clutches (fashionable diaper bags), breast milk trays (for freezing breast milk), massage oil for babies, parenting magazines, etc.
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FOR YEARS, there was the Big Mac vs the Big Mak. Hamburger chain McDonald’s sued local mobile hamburger chain L.C. Big Mak for using a trademark similar to McDonald’s Big Mac.

Three years ago, after a 15-year legal battle, McDonald’s won over L.C. Big Mak. The latter was found by the Supreme Court guilty of infringement and unfair competition as consumers can confuse the Big Mak for the real Big Mac.

How safe is your trademark? How can you ensure that your products will not be cloned and passed off under a different brand name? How should you deal with counterfeiters who copy your product from its form down to its label?

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By: Harvey S. Keh*

There’s a famous proverb that says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

For many of us working towards curbing poverty in our country, this saying resonates to us as saying that our efforts towards uplifting the lives of the poor should not be centered on giving dole-outs, but our main focus should be providing them with the necessary education and training for them to find decent opportunities to earn a living. Thus, it is no wonder that while our present administration may mean well by giving a P500 electricity subsidy to the poorest Filipino families, the subsidy continues to receive flack as a band-aid solution to the growing problem of the rising prices of basic commodities in our country.

Yet, despite the fact that our government, private foundations and non-government organizations have delivered effective livelihood training programs for the past 20 or so years, millions of Filipino families continue to still live with less than P150.00 a day. Does that mean that all the efforts of these well-meaning organizations were total failure? I don’t think so, but I think that we need to understand why many of these families remain below the poverty line despite having the necessary skills that will allow them to access livelihood opportunities.
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By Harvey S. Keh

IT’S June again and classes just opened last week for millions of Filipino students, more than 90.0 percent of which study at public elementary and high schools. To understand the plight of basic education in our country, one need not look further than to check the state of public schools and the performance of its students. Here are some startling facts:

* Out of 10 students who enter Grade 1, only six will be able to finish elementary and only four will eventually finish high school.
* Class sizes still remain a problem with some public schools in highly populated areas having an average class size of 80 to 90 students.
* More than 20.0 percent of our public high school students cannot understand what they are reading and worse, majority of our public schools do not have functional and adequate libraries.

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THERE comes a time in any organization when change needs to happen fast for the company to progress. A good effective leader can bring about change well.

“One man’s or woman’s idea can bring about change,” said Maria Ressa, head of news and current affairs of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, and managing director of ANC. For instance, Lee Kuan Yew, she said, took a backwater nation and turned it into the first world country we now know as Singapore.

At the Women to Women Mentoring Conference at the Philippine Trade Training Center held last April, Ressa revealed that she had to catalyze change in ABS-CBN upon joining the broadcast company in 2005. Their news programs were overtaken by those of GMA in the ratings game. And she felt the company had to emphasize its core values of transparency, accountability and consistency for it to come out on top.

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