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Informants get millions in rewards

Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) handed out NT$1.12 million in reward money yesterday to informants whose tip-offs led to the closing down of two pirate disk operations in Taipei County in the last three months.

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.
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