A report issued by the alliance in February said that P2P piracy continues to grow in Taiwan, and the highest rate of Internet infringement of business software in Asia is in Taiwan.
According to the amendment, service providers violating the regulations would be given a maximum two years imprisonment or fined a maximum of NT$500,000.
Service providers who continue to violate the law one month after they have been convicted would be forced out of business.
Robin Lee (
Four years ago, IFPI Taiwan sued the two largest P2P music file-sharing operators, Kuro and Ezpeer, for violating the Copyright Law. Kuro was found guilty of infringing intellectual property rights in September 2005 and the site was closed last September. Kuro has now transformed itself into a video and audio content provider named Kuroom.
Despite the fact that Ezpeer was found not guilty of copyright infringement in July 2005, it reached an agreement with the record companies to distribute authorized music files last June and renamed itself Ezpeer+.
"If this law had been in effect at that time, we wouldn't have needed to battle with Kuro and Ezpeer for four years," Lee said yesterday. "But it's better late than never."
The legislature also enacted the Patent Attorneys Law (專利師法), a bill aimed at encouraging research and development by creating a system under which the intellectual property of investors is protected.
Anyone who passes a national patent attorney exam would be qualified as a
patent attorney, regardless of their nationality.
The law details the requirements that patent attorneys require to practice
their business, their responsibilities and the way their association should
be organized.
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