November 05, 2006	Sunday	Shawwal 12, 1427

KARACHI, Nov 4: The strict enforcement of Copyrights Law prevented GSP sanctions against Pakistan by the United States. Apart from other measures the FIA’s raid on nine factories in Site area manufacturing pirated CDs contributed to the projection of Pakistan as a country committed to deal with piracy.

Registrar Copyrights Shakil Ahmed Abbasi told Dawn on Saturday that the US Trade Representative (USTR) had initiated an inquiry of intellectual property rights violations in Pakistan last year. He said a negative appraisal by the organisation could have provided grounds for withdraw of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) facility.

Quoting IPO Pakistan Review-2005, he said that the USTR in a statement acknowledged that Pakistan had taken concrete steps to curb the menace of piracy. The USTR observed that Pakistan had taken a number of steps to improve its intellectual property rights regime.

The government announced new regulations to fight IPR thefts and established the Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO) of Pakistan to coordinate enforcement actions.

The IPO Review said that in recognition of these positive developments, the US had closed the review of the GSP petition concerning IPRs protection and enforcement in Pakistan.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also appreciated Pakistani actions and observed: "The US recording industry fully endorses the termination of this investigation. We congratulate Pakistan and its excellent efforts and we commend the USTR for terminating the investigation”.

The American Business Council of Pakistan (ABC) in its Perception Survey Results of 2005 said: “Our members hold a positive opinion about the business environment and remain optimistic about the investment opportunities in Pakistan”.

The survey further observed that in response to Pakistan’s initiative to improve the IP management, the US government had promptly responded to remove Pakistan from the Priority Watch List and closed a four-year old GSP petition in favour of Pakistan.

Mr Abbasi pointed out that Pakistan was the only country, which has declared infringement of copyrights a cognisance and non-bailable crime. The law entails three-year imprisonment and Rs100,000 fine.

The main feature of the copyright law of the country is that the criminal courts hearing the cases have powers to direct the convicted person to pay 50 per cent of the fine to the complainant as compensation.

He said that although the copyright registration was not mandatory under the law but the certificate constitutes the main evidence in violation cases and that was why more and more people were registering their products.

Elaborating on measures taken to enforce the copyright law he said that anti-pirated cells had been set up at all major airports where the Customs staff check books and CDs carried by passengers in personal baggage. Similarly on import side books, videos and cassettes etc., were liable for checking by the Customs.

The copyright office has issued a total of 15,000 certificates so far, of which 12,000 were issued from 1992 till today after the amendments were made to the IPR Ordinance.

With the establishment of IPO in 2005, publishers and video and film-makers turned up in large numbers for registration. Presently, about 2,500 applications are filed in a month compared to only 250 earlier.

The trade and industry is also taking keen interest in registering logos and monograms to protect their products against imitation. Due to lack of automation and shortage of the processing staff a copyright certificate was earlier issued in two and a half years. But efforts are being made to computerise the process which would help to reduce the registry time to one year.

The office issues copyrights registry for CDs, DVDs, software programmes, journals, novels and books etc.

Pakistan is a signatory to the Universal Copyrights Convention (1952), Bern Convention (1866) and the WTO. The copyright registration picked up in 1992 after the Intellectual Property Rights Ordinance was amended in line with the modern day requirements and the process got a further fillip with the creation of IPO in the country.

Mr Abbasi maintained that the copyright office kept a close liaison with the law enforcing agencies like FIA and Customs to check infringement of intellectual property.

The copyrights stakeholders, publishers, manufacturers and audio video cassette recorders acknowledged that their products had been greatly secured against piracy and imitations after their registration with the Copyright Office and piracy in some cases, especially in audio cassettes had completely stopped.

Tahir Sultan Majid, a lawyer of copyright cases, told Dawn that labels and designs of a large number of products belonging to Touch Me (cosmetics), Woodward (baby products), Dawlance (electronics) and Sitara Group (textiles) had been registered with the Copyright Office.

Mohammad Rashid Gaba, senior marketing executive of Gaba Educational Books, said that he had registered over 400 school books with the Copyright department. The firm initiated action on the basis of copyright certificate against pirates of books.