National 10 (Spotlight Weekly)

On Course Of Implementation

Authorities claim they are making every efforts to enforce Intellectual Property rights

By SANJAYA DHAKAL

The government is making serious efforts to enforce the protection of intellectual property rights, according to Surya Prasad Bhandari, under secretary at the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation.

Bhandari, who is also the registrar of the copyright protection unit at the Ministry, said that with the new act in place, the government is now preparing to draft regulations to implement them.

The parliament had passed the Copyright Protection Act 2002 last year. "This new law is compatible with the international standards including the TRIPS," said Bhandari. He added that the government has already formed a task force to come up with necessary regulations to effectively enforce the Act.

But there has been lot of delays in formulating the regulations. The latest copyright act intends to protect creators and their financial rights. It envisages a separate royalty collecting body that will scientifically collect and distribute them.

Speaking at a talk program held by the American Center on July 25, Bhandari said that the government has been vigorously working in the copyright sector for the last two years. "With the help from organizations like WIPO and American Center, we have been continuously developing expertise to deal with this sector."

Bhandari added that there was a need to provide necessary training to people from different authorities like police, public prosecutors, staffs at the registrar's office, judges, custom officials and those who would run the royalty collecting societies in order to effectively deal with copyright violations.

The loss of revenue of the government due to non implementation of intellectual property rights violation could run into tens of millions of rupees. In fact, Santosh Sharma, the director of Music Nepal and general secretary of Copyright Protection Society of Nepal (CPSN) puts forth an interesting analogy. "The earnings from the copyright contributes to whopping 5 percent of the total GDP of the United States. Whereas in Nepal it is way below even a single percent. Imagine how much we are losing."

According to him, if the government effectively protects IP rights, it can increase its revenue by a huge margin. "Protection of IP rights is a win-win proposition. There is nobody who lose by this except the unethical and unscrupulous pirates. The government, entrepreneurs, creators, consumers all stand to gain. Besides, if we respect IP rights, the image and credibility of our nation will vastly improve in the eyes of international community."

However, on the industrial property front, the country is still guided by the outdated act that was introduced way back in 1965. "We know that we need a new act and we are working to introduce it as soon as possible," said Madhusudan Poudyal, director at the industrial property section in the Department of Industry (DoI).