Taipei Times: You have been dealing with the protection of intellectual property rights for over 23 years. What changes have you seen in government, police and public attitudes towards IPR issues?
Jeffrey Harris: When I fist arrived here in 1980, it was very apparent that the government wasn't taking IPR seriously. The government saw the production of infringement material as a natural evolution in the growth of a country. Copying well-known goods was a way for the local industry to bring up their quality and designability. When we tried to go to the police, they didn't care very much about IPR enforcement raids. There was also some corruption.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Needless to say the first few years I was here the government wasn't very happy and spoke out against me. The reason it wasn't happy was that we were going to international organizations and talk-ing about IPR. [US current affairs program] 60 Minutes gave us quite a bit of exposure.
That changed around 1984-1985 when the government woke up and began to realize that this wasn't a good thing. Whereas most countries have counterfeiting mainly as a local problem, most of Taiwan's counterfeited product was turning up overseas and Taiwan was trying to encourage high-tech companies to base themselves here, so lack of enforcement on IPR really did hurt its reputation. Essentially when you talk from the early 1990s onward, counterfeiting started hurting local companies as much as foreign companies.
I have never really had a problem with the police. When you gather all the evidence and hand it to them and say "please act," they'll act. I do raids throughout Asia and I would say the police in Taiwan are the best -- very easy to work with.
The biggest impediment to IPR protection today is clearly the courts and the prosecutors.
The problem with the judicial system is that as long as the infrin-gers see the legal process as a cost of doing business, they're not scared. There are a lot of judges and prosecutors who don't see IPR as important, so they don't issue search warrants. There are judges here who will take someone who robbed NT$500 from 7-Eleven and sentence them to three years, but then an infringer who's made US$100,000 from counterfeit goods will get off with a fine and a suspended sentence. The judiciary has to realize that theft is theft.
Also when we go up against an infringer who's smart and has resources, that person can drag a case out for five, six, seven, even 10 years. This is a problem especially in high-tech infringement where the life of a product could only be two years. By the time there's a sen-tence, no-one cares about the product any more.
TT: The government has recently drafted new laws governing copy-right and trademarks. Do you feel these laws go far enough?
Harris: There's been a premise in the government that copyright infringement needs to be a private criminal complaint, which basically meant that if you were a copyright holder, you would hire lawyers to file the complaint and take it through the courts. The problem with it was that because you don't get any recovery -- the court rarely awards plaintiffs costs or finds damages -- you have to shoulder the entire burden of this yourself, which is US$15,000 to US$25,000 for every single case you bring.
What the Copyright Law (著作權法) needed to do was change infringement to a public criminal pro-secution, which means the government can go in by itself and do sweeps and prosecutions. It is pretty much accepted procedure around the world. This will provide for effective enforcement. It is the greatest single change they could make in the next 10 years.
TT: In the early 1980s you set up the American Chamber of Commerce's Intellectual Property Committee. When you met with government officials recently, in what particular areas of IPR protection did you apply pressure?
Harris: Recently the government has been interested because there's been a lot of pressure on it. We've been meeting with the Minister of the Interior and the police, the Judicial Yuan, the Council for Eco-nomic Planning and Development, the Legislative Yuan and with DPP and KMT caucuses. The main things we've spoken to them about in the last year are the Copyright Law, the speed at which complaints go to court, and the courts and discriminatory policies against foreign companies.
One major problem is that the plaintiff can go and have an expert in the US break down a component and do side-by-side comparisons -- a process that can cost US$50,000 to US$100,000 -- and when it goes to court, the local infringer can bring a professor from a local university who says "I don't see the problem." Then they go back to the US and say, "can you answer this guy's ques-tion?" Of course the judges don't understand high-tech, but that's not our fault. When the prosecution prepares a good case, the defense should have to prepare one too.
TT: The US Trade Representative Office has placed Taiwan on its Special 301 Priority Watch List since 2001, citing the lack of effective enforcement against counterfeiters. What specific measures need to be taken to get Taiwan off the list?
Harris: First, we have to understand that the reason Taiwan is on the list is because it has consistently remained the number two source of counterfeit goods seized in the US, which is pretty substantial. Second, there were certain measures the USTR office required of Taiwan, and in the last year, nothing's been done at all. So there is no reason for Taiwan to expect to get off when it didn't do a thing to change.
In fact, in copyright protection of optical media, the government actually backtracked, because in the last year there have been several initiatives to decriminalize software, printing, music and movie copying at government and educational institutions. Students are the biggest buyers of counterfeit software, music and movies. Taiwan shouldn't be telling its students that's it OK to be counterfeiters until you're 23 or 24 and then change.
Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the master disks used to make counterfeit disks around the world are made in Taiwan. The best way to get off the list would be to change this. The change in the Copyright Law is a huge step in the right direction.
TT: How well trained are the piracy police?
Harris: The police can only do so much. The law makes enforcement a joke. The change in the Copyright Law is going to be a major help. If you can keep taking tough against the counterfeiters, they're eventually going to give up. It's possible to train police on brands that have been around for years and don't change, but in optical media, products change so quickly that it is impossible to train police to recognize the fakes.
TT: Pressure on the government from other nations and the WTO on IPR could be seen as one-sided. Why it is in Taiwan's interest to protect IPR?
Harris: I don't see it being a one-sided issue at all. Taiwan is a developed country that has high-tech. It has a huge music and movie industry; it has its own brands. Taiwan needs to wake up and look at IPR. It's going to lose its music and movie industries, because the home market is being destroyed by counterfeiting. It's going to lose the high-tech industry, because high-tech has too many places to go. What's the point of bringing IPR to Taiwan if there isn't adequate protection? You might as well take it to China.
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