For IPR, the public will make all the difference: experts

Following repeated criticism from the US and Europe that the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) in Taiwan is weak, an IPR expert said yesterday that stronger protection depends on a change in the attitude of Taiwan's people.

"Until the average citizen of Taiwan thinks that it is important to protect intellectual property, obviously a democratic government is not going to protect it," William Hennessey, law professor and chair of the intellectual property graduate program at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire, told the Taipei Times yesterday.

"The question is a political question for the people of this society to consider, and the decision is for them to make," said Hennessey, a veteran China and Taiwan hand who is here at the invitation of the American Institute in Taipei to conduct a three-day IPR program.

The IPR problem starts early in Taiwan and has far-reaching consequences, Hennessey said.

"[Students] ought to reflect that when they steal somebody's intellectual property today, they're taking away a job for themselves or one of their classmates in the future in the companies that produce these products," he said.

A Taipei-based expert agreed.

"Education is a key part of IPR," said John Eastwood, co-chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee of the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei.

"Children get raised in Taiwan with the idea that piracy is OK, from photocopied textbooks in schools and colleges to file-sharing and swapping. It sends a bad message when children are surrounded by pirated goods -- it sends the message that IPR infringement is OK," said Eastwood, also a lawyer at Winkler Partners (博仲法律事務所) in Taipei.

A senior government official pointed out that an extensive education program is in place in Taiwan.

"We attach a lot of importance to education," Margaret Chen (陳淑美), director of the Copyright Department at the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Intellectual Property Office, said yesterday. "But education without legal enforcement of IPR is meaningless."

One target of enforcement is photocopying stores near schools and colleges, Chen said.

Controversial changes to the Copyright Law (著作權法) in June decriminalized students who make fewer than five copies of copyrighted material for their own personal use, but just one copy for commercial purposes is now illegal.

"We have instructed the copy shops that, as they are making copies for profit, they will be penalized," Chen said.

"This has been confirmed by the courts," she said.

Chen's office has a budget of NT$17 million this year to educate Taiwan's public about IPR through newspaper and television advertising, in-school education programs using compact disks and commercial films, seminars, on-line information and interactive games.

In addition to scheduled seminars, the IPO arranges seminars on demand for corporations and schools with audiences of 30 or more.

The popular cable channel ETTV (東森) also aired five programs on how the government is protecting IPR. One program tailed the police's IPR task force on a typical day's duty, and another showed customs officers monitoring the nation's borders, Chen said.