House passes property right bills into law

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives passed on Monday three bills on industrial design, integrated circuit space design and trade confidentiality in the hope of regaining trust and support from foreign investors and the international market.

Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said after the endorsement of the bills that Indonesia was moving a step further in complying with the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).

"These bills are quite new to Indonesian law. We haven't had any of these regulations before. It (the deliberation of the bills) was supposed to be completed in January 2000 but it has been done earlier," Yusril said.

TRIPs was part of the convention of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which Indonesia ratified through Law No. 7/1994.

Indonesia is bound to implement these laws by Jan. 6, 2001.

"These bills were not drafted only to meet the WTO deadline as the country also has certain interests in the Intellectual Property Rights, due to the fact that we have to protect our own interests.

"We also have to regain the confidence of the prospective foreign investors and international traders," Yusril said.

The bills will hopefully fight piracy and provide protection for small-scale industries, legislator Dwi Ria Latifa of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI Perjuangan) said in the closing speech of the House plenary session.

"Many of our Balinese artists, for instance, lose their claim over property rights. With these bills we hope to protect our domestic heritage and other valuable assets," she said.

Yusril said the bills introduced a new system in which a person who claims that his or her industrial design was breached can ask the court to suspend any identical product from the market.

The court's decree will be issued 30 days before the case goes to trial and if it is proven wrong the plaintiff can file a claim for damages later, he added.

Under the three new regulations, violation of the rights carries varied sentences from two to four years or a maximum Rp 300 million fine. The charges are optional and/or cumulative.

The infraction of the three bills can also be investigated by the police and state prosecutors in case of intellectual property rights violations.

"Industrial design is a creation of forms, configurations, lines or color compositions or the mixture of the three dimensions or two dimensions that have an esthetic value as well as being usable to produce industrial commodities or handicrafts," Yusril told the plenary session.

Integrated circuit space design is a half or fully-formed product which contains at least one active element connecting the whole system in an integrated semiconductor material that involves electronic functions.

Trade confidentiality is information on technology and/or a business that is not common public knowledge and has economic value to the business owners and therefore must be kept a secret.

In the Industrial and Integrated Circuit Space Designs bills, the designers are the rightful holders. In the confidentiality bill, the owners of the trade secrets are the rightful parties.

The rights on Industrial and Integrated Circuit Space Designs are issued through a request forwarded to the Directorate General for Intellectual Property Rights, which later will issue a registration certificate according to the existing regulations.

Confidentiality rights, however, do not need any formal registration.

The protection period for both Industrial Design and the Integrated Circuit Space Design are 10 years each starting from the registration date. Trade Confidentiality, however, will remain as long as it is not disclosed to the public.

"It is also possible for the rights to be transferred based on a grant, heritage, written agreement or any other legitimate cause," Yusril said.

If any dispute concerning the rights takes place, it will be handled by the Commercial Court in the defendant's area of domicile. (edt)