Mixed reaction to laws on intellectual property rights

By Listiana Operananta

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives' approval of the amendments to laws on intellectual property rights were welcomed by lawyers but rejected as inadequate by some governmental organizations yesterday.

Some said the laws would help boost technological invention, trade and investment in Indonesia.

The House unanimously passed the amended laws in a session yesterday after deliberating them for two months.

The laws on copyright, on patents and on trademarks were approved yesterday afternoon.

Amendments were made so that the laws would match the requirements of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, including trade in counterfeit goods of the World Trade Organization, which Indonesia ratified in 1994.

The copyright law now includes a provision that copyright on unpublished inventions by anonymous parties will be owned by the state, and published inventions by anonymous parties will be owned by their publishers.

The new law also stipulates that plagiarism of up to 10 percent of an original work will not be considered as violating the law.

The new law says computer program rights will be protected for 50 years, instead of 25 years as stipulated before the amendments.

The Law on Patents now stipulates that an invention's degree of novelty means that it is not a continuation of a previous work.

"Parallel importation" or the import of copy of patented products is allowed by the law as long as it has never been produced in Indonesia.

The revamped Law on Trademarks says that protection for renowned products is given based on the initiative of their owners. Protection can also be given by the Trademark Bureau of the Ministry of Justice refusing to accept an application for the same trademark.

Many experts and lawyers reacted yesterday in favor of the amendments.

Bambang Priyono and Bambang Suryowidodo of Amroos Law Consultants who specialize in patent and trademark rights respectively, said the revised patent and trademarks laws were satisfactory but needed further clarification through government regulations.

"However, the newly-revised laws are still unclear about the novelty element because they stress that a request for patent protection can be accepted as long as it has never been a part of an existing work. The old law was much clearer because it only stressed the novelty," Priyono said.

He said that parallel importation, which is allowed under the new law, would upset businesses, such as pharmacies, because products invented overseas could now be patented here.

Companies from more than one country could seek to patent a product here simultaneously, he said.

"I understand that this is to protect Indonesia from being just a market place (for other countries' products) but the government should make a regulation to clarify it," he said.

Bambang Suryowidodo said the new laws were good, especially because an application for trademark protection now could be made for each class of a product or service.

But the term "famous trademarks" needs further clarification, he said on the article on "Protection of Famous Trademarks".

"Famous trademarks are relative. One trademark can be famous in one place but not in another. So the law should give further explanation on this," he said.

Suryowidodo said that types of famous products should be clarified to avoid registration of identical product names belonging to different product types. He cited "Mitsubishi car" and "Mitsubishi paint".

But not all were happy about the new laws. The Pesticide Action Network Indonesia and Walhi, a non-governmental organization on the environment, issued a joint statement yesterday against the Patent Law.

They said the revised law would allow patent applications for all inventions from living organisms, including humans, animals and plants.

The activists said that even humans could be patented.

The law has a provision that allows the patent of living organisms as long as it does not violate order or morality.

The definition of inventions and inventions on living organism was too broad, they said. It needed further study because it could be interpreted that living organisms can be patented.

Walhi and the network said the patent of living organisms was controversial, and could violate ethics. They urged that the laws not be enacted.