Volunteer Spotlight: Nicole Foga

Nicole Foga (Foga Daley, Jamaica)

Nicole Foga (Foga Daley, Jamaica) is making an impact locally and globally. She helps lead a law firm and works at a global level to enforce trademark rights on the Internet, while on a personal level, she is involved in local philanthropic and legal initiatives, and enjoys growing flowers and farming tropical produce.

Ms. Foga is the managing partner at Foga Daley and also handles intellectual property–focused commercial and transactional matters. On any given day, she may be reviewing and drafting contracts or involved in a due diligence exercise, providing recommendations to clients on improved brand protection.

In Ms. Foga’s opinion, the most important issue in trademark law today is the rise in online trademark infringement coupled with the challenges of global enforcement.

As an INTA volunteer nearly a decade, Ms. Foga has most enjoyed working with the Internet Committee, ICANN Compliance and Accountability Subcommittee. In this role, she attended her first Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting, in Panama City, Panama in 2018. She focused on monitoring and reviewing the ICANN Contractual Compliance and Consumer Safeguards as well as engaging with ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee. Currently, she serves on INTA’s Data Protection Committee, Best Practices Subcommittee.

When asked how INTA addresses any concerns she has, Ms. Foga said, “Concerns that I have in relation to professional development, getting the message out to colleagues and the larger society about the importance of trademarks and branding and the need to respect intellectual property are all areas that are being progressively addressed by INTA’s global network of volunteers acting through various committees and subcommittees.”

Ms. Foga holds an LLM in Commercial Law from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Among her volunteer positions, she is a director and the secretary of the Usain Bolt Foundation, which is “dedicated to the legacy for happy children; to enhance the character of children through educational and cultural development, as they live their dreams.”

In other activities, Ms. Foga serves as the honorary consul for the Romanian government in Jamaica and as chair of the Jamaican Bar Association’s Telecommunications Broadcasting & Technology Committee.

At home, she has two dogs, BJ and Leo. In her spare time, she also enjoys farming and gardening—and grows pineapples, bananas, plantain, ginger, pumpkin yam, watermelon, mangos, and passion fruit. She also takes pleasure in photography and cooking.

Ms. Foga’s favorite trademarks are NIKE, because she likes the messaging and philosophy; APPLE for its innovation and constant creativity; and CAFÉ BLUE, a Jamaican trademark related to coffee with the “blue” suggestive of her country´s Blue Mountains known for premium coffee, and, of course, the Usain Bolt Silhouette, known as the “To the World Pose,” because it is Usain Bolt!

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest.

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