Eager to shrug off its tag as a major source of pirated goods, Taiwan yesterday pledged that next year will be a year of action against infringements of intellectual property rights.
Minister without Portfolio Tsai Ching-yen (蔡清彥) reported to the Cabinet yesterday that while progress had been made among government ministries on combating IPR violations, there was still much to do.
"Hopefully we will be able to learn from experience and improve our position on IPR," Tsai said, referring to Taiwan's inclusion on the "Special 301 priority watch list" by the Office of the US Trade Representatives, for failing to take effective action against commercial piracy.
Tsai also said the nation needs to clean up its act as its business practices will come under an international microscope when it formally enters the WTO in January.
"After we enter the WTO our IPR policy will face severe challenges in the international arena," Tsai said.
One of the biggest challenges for the government in dealing with IPR is coordinating different government agencies, Tsai said.
Because six agencies are involved in different levels in dealing with the problem, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) instructed Tsai to coordinate a united response and brief the Cabinet on his efforts every six months.
"At an inter-ministerial meeting in April all agencies were told to come with there own action plan to deal with the problem," Tsai said.
The National Police Administration reported that as of October, 538 trademark violations, 118 patent violations and 417 cases of software piracy had been reported this year.
Last year authorities confiscated NT$7.96 billion (US$247 million) in counterfeit products, including CD-ROMs, video games, DVDs and VCDs.
Led by the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Intellectual Property Office, an action plan to promote effective enforcement will be ready within one month, said Tsai.
The Business Software Alliance, which fights software piracy and boasts members such as Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Dell, has already been in close contact with the government concerning the problem and has offered its help, Tsai said.
The agencies' work against IPR infringements will be overseen by the Cabinet-level National Information and Communication Initiative Task Force, headed by Tsai.
Another of the task force's programs is to wire the entire country, starting with linking the government and industry into an integrated communications system via the Internet.
Called "e-Taiwan," and approved by the Cabinet yesterday, the plan will cost an estimated NT$40 billion over five years, Tsai said.
"The plan will necessitate the local development of software, in which Taiwan is not so strong," said Tsai, who added local software development would provide incentive to more seriously tackle IPR violations.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS