Intellectual property: ‘Instead of parallel judiciary, strengthen existing system’

Participants call for providing swift justice to aggrieved individuals.

ISLAMABAD:

The establishment of intellectual property right tribunals for speedy justice to those affected was discussed at a roundtable conference at the National Library on Tuesday. The meeting was held by the Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO) in collaboration with the US embassy.

Lawyers, government officials and experts from the US government gathered to come up with a workable strategy for setting up the tribunals across the country under the IPO Act 2012.

The IPO was established in 2005 as an autonomous body for integrated management of intellectual property rights and was given permanent status in the form of the IPO Act 2012.



While discussing the pros and cons of the proposed tribunals, speakers stressed the need for setting up of an efficient avenue of addressing genuine grievances rather than having something that only exists on paper.

IPO attorney Hassan Irfan termed the idea of forming intellectual property (IP) tribunals as great, but said that the IPO law itself has contradictions which needed to be addressed first. Irfan was against setting up independent IPO tribunals. “Knowing the realities of Pakistan, I would be nervous if we create a parallel judiciary,” he said, adding that numerous tribunals had been set up before in the country without any positive outcome.

Irfan, as well as other participants, agreed on the need for strengthening the existing legal system and enabling it to cater to IP cases rather than setting up an entirely new entity.



“It is the protection of people’s rights that should be our foremost concern,” he said.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, an IPO official suggested that existing consumer courts working for consumer rights could be used to protect IP rights too. “The offices are already set up, the judges are there and the public is aware about it.

We would just have to work on capacity building rather then developing infrastructure from the beginning”.

The US government’s Commercial Law Development Program representative Joe Yang said that a basic education about IP rights is necessary for the public.

“For starters, we need to listen to the needs and see what it is that we can do,” he said. Speaking to The Express Tribune, Yang said that his organisation can only contribute in developing the existing capacity.

Negating the need for setting up new tribunals, Yang said “judges can handle IP cases and with practice develop IP expertise”.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2013.