July 23, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 12,1423

ISLAMABAD, July 22: The government has decided to set up a Pakistan Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (PIPRO) to provide all the intellectual property rights requirements under one organization.

This will be a self-financing and an autonomous organization manned by professionally qualified persons, says Trade Policy 2002-03 issued on Monday.

Under this organization, necessary infrastructure in keeping with contemporary requirements will be provided.

The report says that the working of our copyright, trade mark and patent offices were unsatisfactory and desperately called for a major revamping.

The government is also considering to remove uncertainty to bring about consistency between the laws relating to intellectual property rights and Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Recently, the government has revised laws governing intellectual property rights—trade, marks, patents, copyrights, integrated circuits layout and industrial designs.

According to the report, violation of intellectual property rights acts as a deterrent to foreign investment, causes considerable leakage of revenue and was a disincentive for creative work.

“We are determined to ensure better protection of intellectual property rights. We have also noticed that certain provisions of the PPC overlap with those of the Trade Marks Ordinance (TMO) but were not consistent with each other,” said the report.

Explaining further, the report says, PPC did not provide for minimum punishment but TMO did; the offences under the relevant PPC sections were cognizable while under the TMO they were not.