Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (
Intellectual property rights' (IPR) champions welcomed the cash rewards, which were the first big handouts in the government's recently re-invigorated scheme to battle counterfeiters.
"It is very good that the government is encouraging informers to stand up and pass on information about counterfeiting operations," said Jeffrey Harris, co-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei's Intellectual Property Committee and director of Orient Commercial Enquiries, a consulting firm specializing in IPR.
"In other countries offering rewards is the most effective way to combat piracy," he said.
To protect their identity, the informants were not present at yesterday's ceremony in the Ministry of Economic Affairs' auditorium. Lin presented the citations instead to police officers, who stood in for the informants.
The informants gave information that led to the seizure of NT$24 million in illegal goods. In the first raid in March, machinery and NT$14 million worth of computer-game disks were seized from an underground factory in Linkou, Taoyuan County.
The second crackdown on June 15 in Sanhsia, Taipei County, netted gaming disks worth over NT$10 million.
Each informant will receive NT$1 million, plus a bonus based on the value of goods seized. The rewards will be paid in three separate installments, according to a statement from the ministry's Intellectual Property Office yesterday.
The bonus in the first case totals NT$2.45 million and NT$2.06 million in the second case.
Twenty-five percent of the money will be paid when the case goes to the prosecutor's office. Another 25 percent will be paid when the prosecutor completes the investigation into the case. The final 50 percent will be paid when the defendant is found guilty, the statement said.
The government has adopted a range of new measures to combat its image as one of the world's worst IPR infringers. Earlier this year, the maximum reward for informing on large-scale counterfeiting operations was increased from NT$1 million to NT$10 million. At that time the reward for police officers involved in counterfeiting cases was increased to NT$2 million.
Officers can also gain counterfeit-busting reward points that lead to promotions.
The protection of IPR has been a sticking point in Taiwan's relations with other governments. Taiwan was placed on the US Trade Repre-sentative's Special 301 Priority Watch List of serious IPR violators last month for the third year in a row. The nation continues to be the No. 2 source of pirated optical disk material -- CDs, video CDs and DVDs -- in the US.
To get rid of the stigma, the government has pulled out all the stops in a massive legislative push to show that it is serious about IPR. This year, the legislature made crucial amendments to the Patent Law (專利法), the Optical Media Law (光碟管理條例) and the Commercial Label Law (商標法).
On June 6, it was the turn of the Copyright Law (著作權法), which was finally amended to make copyright infringement a public rather than a private crime. This critical change demanded by the entertainment industry now empowers police to initiate arrests against counterfeiters without first receiving a complaint from the rights' holder as was the case before the change.
However, the 53 changes to the law passed by the legislators left many in the industry confused. The Motion Picture Association and the Business Software Alliance have yet to issue their formal reactions to the changes.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by