'Indonesia still ambiguous about combating piracy'

'Indonesia still ambiguous about combating piracy'

JAKARTA (JP): An official said on Thursday that this country
was still ambiguous about combating piracy of intellectual
property rights, arguing that many small enterprises earned their
profits from pirated products.

The Ministry of Justice and Human Rights' Director General for
Intellectual Property Rights A. Zen Umar Purba warned that such a
perception hampered the effort to protect intellectual property
rights.

"Don't use vendors or small businesses as an excuse for not
fighting piracy. The ventures may be small now, but they can
become big," he told a media conference here marking Intellectual
Property Rights Day on April 26.

Purba also pointed to the punishments for copyright violations
which he said were unsatisfactory and contributed to rampant
piracy.

He referred to the 1987 Law on Copyright which carries a
maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment and/or a Rp 100
million (US$10,000) fine for copyright violations.

Many observers say that the punishment is too light because
professional counterfeiters can pass bribes worth hundreds of
millions of rupiah to law enforcers so as to avoid legal action.

Purba acknowledged that piracy was rampant in this country,
with pirated VCDs easy to find on the streets.

He revealed data compiled by the International Intellectual
Property Alliance (IIPA) which estimated that revenue losses from
copyright piracy in Indonesia reached US$186 million in 1999.

"But our incidence of piracy is not the worst in the world,"
Purba said.

China, he added, topped the revenue-loss league with $1
billion. Even Malaysia ranked higher than Indonesia with $260
million.

However, Purba said, there were many things that we should be
concerned about regarding this country's natural resources and
locally developed technologies.

Scientists have called for a law on this as there have already
been several cases in which organisms taken from Indonesia free
of charge were registered by foreign companies.

"Honestly, we have yet to scratch the surface of this issue,"
Purba said.

Kartono Subagyo from the Ministry of Agriculture said that
formulating such a law needed a thorough knowledge about access
to natural resources.

"There hasn't been any concept of profit-sharing with
villages, for example. I think we have to do our homework on this
together," he said.

According to Purba, a bill amending the law on copyright,
patents and trademarks is now in its final stage in the House of
Representatives.

"We actually specified the rights (that could be registered)
in 1997, but there have been some revisions made as there were a
number of points that weren't fully resolved," he said without
elaborating.

Earlier in December, the House passed three bills respectively
on industrial design, integrated circuit space design and trade
confidentiality.

Meanwhile, a specialist in the State Ministry for Research and
Technology, Sulaeman Kamil, said that Purba's directorate general
should be given a bigger budget to finance its programs
publicizing such rights.

"The directorate general lacks a sufficient budget right now
because all of their revenues from trademark registration have to
be paid over to the government as Non-Tax State Revenue," he
said.

The directorate general received some Rp 25 billion last year.

"Meanwhile, in Korea or Japan 90 percent of the revenue goes
to the directorate itself," Sulaeman added.

According to Sulaeman, the directorate general and State
Ministry for Research and Technology will cooperate to publicize
registrable rights and thereby increase revenues.

"There are some strategic steps that we're developing,
including an incentive system for inventors and also including
these rights as part of subjects at university," he said. (hdn)