July 05, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 8, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, July 4: Foreign and local experts here on Tuesday asked Pakistan to safeguard its traditional knowledge and local products through legislations, capacity-building and structural and legal reforms.

Addressing a workshop they said that Pakistan must not lag behind in the ongoing international race in which countries have started registering their traditional know-how and brands under their own geographical indications (GIs) under the World Trade Organisation agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

They warned that Pakistan was already unclear how to deal with the ongoing issue of super basmati rice with India, which recently registered the rice as its own GI despite the fact that it historically belonged to Pakistan.

The two-day national workshop on GIs had been organised by the Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO) Pakistan, World Intellectual Rights Organisation (WIPO) and the European Union (EU) at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) headquarters.

Director General IPO-Pakistan, Yasin Tahir, said that before April last year, intellectual property situation in Pakistan was being internationally perceived to be constantly deteriorating because of the copyright piracy. Although copyright was one of the conventional and non-conventional intellectual property assets besides patents, trade marks, service marks, trade secrets and GIs, etc yet it was the copyright piracy which was defining Pakistan’s intellectual property (IP) image in the world.

However, in order to rectify the deteriorating IP situation in Pakistan, the government established the IPO-Pakistan for integrated management of intellectual property and enforcement and coordination as a focal organisation.

He said the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been empowered to eliminate piracy by including the Copyright Ordinance, 1962 in the Schedule of FIA Act, 1974. Similarly, Pakistan Customs had been activated to interdict illicit import and export of pirated optical discs (CDs, DVDs and Cards) through the establishment of Anti-Piracy Cells (APCs) at the country’s international airports.

He said FIA had skillfully raided and closed the notorious piracy infrastructure in the country. He said the FIA and Pakistan Customs were busy controlling the supply side of piracy. The IPO had also launched a number of demand side initiatives including IP Awareness and Public Outreach Programme.

Representatives of WIPO, Denis Croze and Nuno Pires de Carvalho, also highlighted the importance of GIs and intellectual property rights protection for the developing economies including Pakistan. They also gave a number of suggestions to improve the Pakistan’s Geographical Indications of Goods (registration and protection) Ordinance, 2004, as per the international standards and requirements.

Mr Croze said that GIs contributed towards rural development, maintained qualified population in deprived areas, encouraged agricultural diversification, preserved bio-diversity, combated desertification, preserved local know-how and resources and attracted and developed eco and cultural tourism.

He said that GI was identified as one of the most suitable mechanism for the protection of traditional knowledge and collective preservation of intellectual rights. He said that the challenges for the developing countries were to understand the GIs issue, adopt a system of protection, identify the products, organise producers, face and fight the genericization of their geographical names and promote their GIs products.

During the questions answer session, representatives of the private sector asked the government to register all the GIs to protect traditional knowledge and domestic industry.