COPYRIGHTS, being the principal component of intellectual property rights, guarantee the protection of all creations of authors, designers, artists, softwares, and others.

Innovators have become ineffective owing to the absence of a copyright board for years, resulting in unavoidable losses to intellectual property stakeholders.

Pending proceedings on several applications of rectification and cancellation and appeals are directly affecting innovators, creators, designers, authors, developers and other stakeholders. This has become a routine.

The existing copyrights board, which was re-constructed in 2015 vide notification No. 10/IPOP/2014-RA-IV following the dissolution of previous board of 2013, has not been operational since its re-construction as the appointed chairman left without assuming charge.

Thus the constitutional rights of stakeholders are under threat as they cannot use legal remedies that include rectification of any wrongful and fraudulent entry from the register and index of copyrights, appeals against any decision of the registrar, grant of licensing, franchise, translation rights, and the permission of collection and determination of royalties along with proceedings of civil suits related to copyrights.

There is a need for having a copyrights board under the leadership of a dedicated chairman to implement the copyright laws.

Karimullah Adeni

Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2017