Registrar of Copy Rights Shakil Ahmed Abbasi on Wednesday said that various forums have urged the government to establish an Intellectual Property Rights Tribunal (IPRT) comprising intellectual property rights experts for a better implementation of the copyrights law.
Talking to the media, he said that those forums have also urged the authorities to empower the Intellectual Property Rights Organisation to implement the related law effectively. He said the violation of copyrights law is a crime and the police enjoy the authority to arrest the violators even without a warrant. Violation of copyrights law is a non-bailable offence and the guilty could be fined upto Rs 100,000 or sent to prison for three years or even get both punishments, he added.
He said the copyrights law was enacted in 1962 while the registrar's office was established in 1967, and added that before 1962 Pakistan was following the pre-partition British law. In the beginning, registrations process under the copy rights act was slow as only 200 to 250 applications were received for registrations, and from 1967 to 1992 only 5, 000 registrations were made under this act, he said.
Up till now more than 25,000 registrations have been made under the copyrights act, paying only a nominal fee of Rs 500 for each registration. Replying to a query, he said the piracy of video cassettes has been considerably reduced after raids on video cassettes' shops. He told the participants that in today's world, strict implementation of copyrights law is the only answer to promote and safeguard one's creation nationally and internationally.
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