Copyright laws made tougher

Accra, Dec. 28, GNA - Mr Alfred Kumi-Atiemo, Assistant Director of the Copyright Office, said on Thursday the minimum fine for the violation of anti-piracy and other copyright and Intellectual Property (IP)laws now stood at 500 penalty units, which was equivalent to 60 million cedis. He said formerly the fine which was quoted in Ghanaian pounds in the law books was so little that perpetrators of violations got away almost free.

"But now, under the new law, which is in conformity with international standards, the law now quotes fines in penalty units and one penalty unit is the equivalent of 120,000 cedis," he said. Mr Kumi-Atiemo made this known to journalists at a day's National Seminar for Intellectual Property (IP) Stakeholders and Law Enforcement Agencies. The seminar was jointly organized by the International Trade Centre (ITC), UNCTAD and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in collaboration with the Copyright Office of Ghana and the Registrar General's Department, under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiative (PSI).

It was to create awareness for stakeholders, including owners of IP, such as literary works, copyrights and industrial property, and law enforcement agencies like the Police; Customs, Excise and Preventive Service(CTPS); Immigration Service and the Judiciary on how to maximize the benefits from Ghana's revamped IP Rights (IPR) laws. Under the WTO TRIPS Agreement, all WTO member countries were to adjust their local IPR laws to cover seven areas - copyright and related rights; trademarks; geographical indications; industrial designs (architectural designs and more); Patents; layout designs (topographies) of integrated circuits and undisclosed information.

Mr Kumi-Atiemo noted that through the assistance of the Swiss Government, Ghana undertook an 11-year amendment process to align IPR laws to the WTO TRIPS Agreement and other specific international IP agreements. He said the country, like all other developing countries was initially allotted five years, within which to complete its alignment process, but it took Ghana 11 years to complete. "Now the scope of the Law has been widened to protect even the rights of owners of computer hardware and software programmes, which used to be alien to our law books - computer hardware is captured under artistic works and the software is under literary works in the law."

Mr Kumi-Atiemo said as part of measures to make the application of the Law effective, copyright database was also in the process of being computerized. "We have already awarded the contract to a consultant to do a feasibility study prior to the computerization for the actual computerization to take off," he said. Mr Kumi-Atiemo noted that one more amendment in the Law was the number of years it took for an IP to become public property from the day it was published, which he said had also been changed from 50 years to 70 years.

This, he said, was to encourage creativity and give the hope to IP rights owners that the law would protect their rights long enough for them to enjoy the fruits of their creativity and even pass it on to generations after them.

Mr Selbi Ashong-Katai, President of the Ghana Writers Association (GWA), told the GNA that the Association was impressed with the move to align local IPR laws with international initiatives and protocols to protect literary and artistic works of Ghanaians both here and abroad. He noted that the law as it stood over the years coupled with the ill-resourced copyright office in the country, made it easy for literary works and other IP to be pirated rampantly. Mr Ashong-Katai observed that, even though, most pirated books in Ghana tended to be those of foreign writers, most Ghanaians books were pirated in the schools by some recalcitrant teachers and students, who usually wanted to avoid buying textbooks. He was hopeful that with the revamped law and the vigorous awareness creation among law enforcement agencies, that the trend would be halted.

Mr Kwadwo Affram Asiedu, Deputy Minister of Trade Industry and PSI, noted that the revamped international IPR Law also provided flexibility for developing countries like Ghana, which did not have the capacity to produce enough pharmaceuticals to meet the health needs of their people, to procure such drugs at affordable prices from overseas. He said the Ministry of Health; Food and Drugs Board and the Registrar-General's Department were currently working together to ensure that Ghana took advantage of that flexibility. The seminar was sponsored by the Joint Integrated Technical Assistance Programme (JITAP) and was attended by about 60 participants from the law enforcement agencies, various copyright owners associations, the copyright office and the Registrar-General's Department.