Students majoring in Law must continue to study and participate in the development of the law because the law will always follow as time progresses. In relation to that, the association of law students at Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH), or the HMFH-UPH for short, represents the law major of the nation in the Pelita Harapan Business Law Competition (PHBLC) in order to develop their skills in business laws that are related with intellectual property rights (IPR). This competition was held on the 22nd to the 25th of May, 2019 at the UPH Karawaci campus.

This year’s PHBLC theme was ‘Protecting the Intellectual Property Rights of Economics in the Modern Era’, which was aimed to sharpen the law students’ abilities in the booming e-commerce area.

The leader of PHBLC and a 2016 law major, Vergio Christian, commented on this event, “Now, business is developing because of technology. Take, for example, Tokopedia, which is one of the biggest buying and selling sites. However, there is a downside to this: Tokopedia often sells fake products. This is a problem that must be solved because although the seller of the fake product is breaking the IPR law, there is no action taken by the ones in charge, maybe because the officials are not ready to transition to a new, modern era. That is where the theme stems from.”

In addition, PHBLC also held a few other branch competitions, of which are: the Moot Court Competition, which is a mock court competition that debates about a business topic; the Legal Opinion competition, which is a competition that encourages participants to analyze a case through the laws that are effective in Indonesia; and the Contract Drafting and Negotiation Competition, which is a competition where participants are asked to create drafts and negotiate contracts according to the cases posed by the committee.

PHBLC also invited Dr. Ronald Lumbuun, SH. MH as a keynote speaker in the National Seminar titled ‘Enforcing the IPR Law in the Industrial 4.0 Revolution’. There was also the Legal Expo, which was aimed to promote networking between law students and government officials, law firms, or companies.

The PHBLC event was attended by 50 delegations from universities across Indonesia, including Universitas Pelita Harapan, Universitas Trisakti, Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Brawijaya, Universitas Diponegoro, Universitas Bina Nusantara, Universitas Padjadjaran, and many other universities.

The main goal of the competition was to create a breakthrough on how to solve the problem regarding IPR in the modern era and to facilitate Indonesian law students in building networks with law firms, government officials, and other law faculties.