Intellectual property (IP) rights breaches accounted for the most economic crimes committed in Taiwan this year, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday.
According to the data, 4,959 economic crimes were committed in the first eight months of this year, and intellectual property rights violation cases numbered 3,358, or about 67.6 percent of the total.
Economic crimes cost the economy about NT$17.3 billion (US$547 million), down NT$4.7 billion, or about 21.15 percent, from the same period last year, the data showed.
Intellectual property rights cases cost NT$10.7 billion, or 62.2 percent, in lost revenue, the data showed.
However, this was figure down NT$3.4 billion from a year earlier.
The ministry said it has cracked down on breaches of intellectual property rights in a bid to protect the interest its of intellectual property rights owners and consumers.
Police investigated 1,832 cases of trademark violations that resulted in economic losses of NT$1.43 billion, and 1,526 cases of copyrights violations with losses coming to NT$9.31 billion, the ministry said.
Police arrested 3,783 people for alleged intellectual property rights violations, down by 146 people from a year earlier, the ministry said.
The number of people arrested for overall economic crimes was 6,819, down 1,062 from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the number of violations of domestic financial rules, such as loan-shark operations or underground economic activities, was 947, about 19.1 percent of the total economic crimes, resulting in losses of about NT$6.3 billion the data showed.
During the past eight months police arrested 1,863 suspects for financial rules violations, down 387 from a year earlier, the ministry said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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