Jordan Times
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Intellectual property
rights come under the spotlight
By Melanie Jacobson
AMMAN — Protection of intellectual property (IP)
rights has become a familiar issue over the past week for many Jordanians
participating in IP-related activities.
The Kingdom, along with other World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)
member states, observed World IP Day last Tuesday to raise awareness of the role
of IP in everyday life and to celebrate the societal contributions of innovators
and artists around the world.
To mark the occasion, seminars and discussions were held Monday through Thursday
at the University of Jordan (UJ) and the Royal Film Commission (RFC) in a series
called “The Legal Part of the Art,” geared toward the Kingdom's filmmakers,
artists, writers, and musicians.
Seminar topics included copyrights and international protection of authors' and
performers' rights, along with advice for artists and other creative producers
on how to protect their intellectual assets.
The smaller interactive discussions, moderated by IP rights specialists,
addressed problems commonly facing creative producers, like piracy and technical
challenges.
Creative industries, the combination of arts, technology, business and inspired
human capital, comprise the fastest growing economic sector in the world today
and can make significant contributions to a country's GDP, according to the
Royal Film Commission.
Workshop organisers predicted that better understanding of IP rights would
encourage participation in the Kingdom's potentially lucrative creative economy,
and contribute to the country's cultural branding.
The event was organised by the Goethe Institut-Amman, the Arab Society for
Intellectual Property, UJ, UNESCO Amman, the National Library, the Companies
Control Directorate and the RFC.
Local and regional business, banking and legal professionals and government
officials also learned about IP rights, at a conference organised by the Jordan
Intellectual Property Association (JIPA) last week with support from the WIPO.
In Jordan, at present, it is “socially accepted to infringe copyrights,” said
Omar Jazy, managing partner at the Jordanian Centre for Dispute Resolutions and
a moderator at the conference. Infringements occur everyday when consumers
purchase a copied DVD illegally for JD1 instead of paying JD15 for the original
disc.
Sessions on intellectual property rights explained how local companies that own
IP can protect it, and encouraged those infringing on the rights of others to
stop.
The Kingdom should encourage protection of IP rights to “promote economic ties
with the US,” Al Jazy told The Jordan Times.
Without proper IP protection, it would be “very difficult for foreign companies
to find it tempting to invest in Jordan,” Al Jazy added.
But Tawfiq Al Tabaa, board member of the Jordan Intellectual Property
Association (JIPA), assured attendees that Jordanian law is in compliance with
international IP standards.
“We've gone beyond our WTO (World Trade Organisation) obligations,” he said. “We
enacted those laws all the way back in 2000.”
Now the emphasis is on “adopting laws not because of any multilateral agreements
but to suit our own needs,” and to “stay up to speed with developed economies,”
he told The Jordan Times.
Jordanians can be victims of IP rights infringements as well. Lara Ayoub, portal
manager for Al Ghad newspaper and a conference attendee, complained that three
or four articles from the Arabic daily had been found reproduced in full on
reputable non-Jordanian news and sports websites. Neither the newspaper nor the
authors were accredited, and reproduction permission was not requested.
The newspaper's attorney notified the offending websites but received no
acknowledgement, Ayoub told The Jordan Times. One website subsequently posted an
additional unaccredited article from the daily. Conference panelists suggested
that Al Ghad resort to international legal recourse and adopt more technical
protection measures, like encryption in the future.
JIPA works with the public to promote awareness of IP rights, one of its key
objectives in organising the event, titled “E-Commerce Conference: Strategies &
Policies.”