The number of parties put on reached 59 in Dallas in 2013, only to slump by 57 per cent  to 25 when the annual get-together moved to Asia last year. While exact reasons for the fall are impossible to ascertain, a difficulty in obtaining party venues in Hong Kong might have been a factor alongside a feeling that they were operating in more austere times.

Visible to clients

A cautious return to festivity might be partly explained by findings in the Global Trademark Benchmarking Survey which shows 10 per cent of respondents not being optimistic about expected levels of client referral, at one end of the spectrum, and 20 per cent being very optimistic, at the other end. But there is a hard core of firms which want ‘to be visible and to create a forum in which they can see as many clients’, according to World Trademark Review. Sources ITA and World Trademark Review