Many Indonesian garment products pirated: Oetojo
Many Indonesian garment products pirated: Oetojo
JAKARTA (JP): Many Indonesian garment products have been the objects of international piracy since the nation become one of the world's largest textile exporters, Minister of Justice Oetojo Oesman said yesterday.
"Several trademarks of our clothing products have been pirated in foreign markets," Oetojo said yesterday.
Speaking to reporters after opening a three-day conference on intellectual property rights for industrial products, the minister said Indonesia was considering legal action against the culprits abroad.
The meeting, with participants from 20 Asian countries, is being hosted by the Directorate General of Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks, in cooperation with the Asian Regional Office of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO).
Oetojo did not name the products that have been pirated or the countries involved.
But some of the foreign companies which had copied the products appear to have done so legitimately, at least in their home countries, because they had filed for the trademark license for the products concerned.
The minister yesterday disclosed the government's plan to revise the various pieces of legislation which govern intellectual property rights, most notably the 1987 law on copyrights, the 1989 law on patent rights and the 1992 law on design and trademarks.
Necessary
The revisions are necessary in view of the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which Indonesia signed and ratified and which came into force on Jan. 1. In particular, amendments to Indonesian law are necessitated by the GATT clause on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).
In addition to this, Indonesia is working on new laws to regulate industrial product designs, integrated circuits, and trade secrets,the minister said. "All these new laws are expected to be completed by 1996," he said.
Indonesia has five years to adjust its laws in accordance with the TRIPs clause.
The TRIPs issue has been of concern primarily to developed countries, which claim that there have been more and more TRIPs violations in developing countries, such as the copying of trademarks, cassettes, laser discs and computer programs.
TRIPs, which were previously handled by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), will be taken over by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Under the WTO, TRIPs will refer to the Bern Convention on copyrights and the Paris Convention on industrial rights.
Indonesia is not a member of the Bern Convention, but is a signatory of the Paris Convention, albeit with some reservations.
A number of industrialized countries, including the United States, European countries and Australia, have made bilateral agreements on TRIPs with Indonesia to protect their products from TRIPs violations here.
In 1989, Indonesia made a bilateral agreement with the U.S., extending protection to such materials originating in the United States.
Poor law enforcement, however, has led the U.S. Commerce Department to place Indonesia on its "watch list." This is a less serious classification than that of "priority countries", which are those without copyright law. (imn)