House passes property right bills into law
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)