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)