Cambodia Lags In Fighting Against IP Piracy

Ten years after joining the World Trade Organization, Cambodia is still awash with counterfeit CDs and pharmaceutical drugs, government officials admitted at a conference devoted to enforcing intellectual property (I.P.) laws.

Cambodia needs to root out the “threat” of counterfeit and pirated goods, Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol told conference attendees this week. Ignoring trademarks, patents and copyrights, I.P. infringements create “threats to the health and safety of consumers, the discouragement of investment and the activities of organized crime that are a concern to us all.”

Last year, Cambodian enforcement agencies confiscated and destroyed about 170,000 CDs, 26 types of fake medicines and 82 counterfeit trademarks of cosmetics, such as Nivea and L’Oreal.

“It is our hope that the Cambodian people will realize the benefit of purchasing authentic products, as IPR theft harms consumers who waste their money and can put themselves and their loved ones at risk,” said Sean McIntosh, a spokesman for U.S. Embassy, which is providing support to train Cambodian law enforcement agencies.

At Emy’s DVD House on Street 51, the owner said he is aware of intellectual property rights, but that authorities turn a blind eye to the sale of counterfeit merchandise.

Declining to give his name, he said he was granted a license to sell his goods and receives visits from the Chamkar Mon district governor.

Asian IPR SME Helpdesk is a project funded by the European Commission to work with small and medium sized businesses to enforce intellectual property rights.

“Although Cambodia has established many new laws in the field of I.P., it will be a number of years before Cambodia comes into full WTO compliance,” says the group’s latest report.

Jakub Ramocki, a Helpdesk adviser, was blunter. “In Cambodia, there’s a lack of awareness” of intellectual property issues, he said. “There is a common acceptance of fake products and there’s an issue of corruption in the courts and a lack of skilled examiners.”

For many Cambodians, buying a new DVD at a retail price of even $7 is too expensive, said Ung Nareth, president of the Motion Picture Association of Cambodia, an independent body that aims to protect intellectual property.

Mr. Nareth said Cambodia’s I.P. enforcement agencies are doing a bad job and are not serious about confiscating pirate goods.

“You can’t enforce the law upon people and starve them,” he said. “They should find something for the sellers to get on with when they take away their business.”

Source: Cambodia Daily | March 29, 2014 | By: George Styllis

WTO: New Deadline for IP Enforcement in Cambodia

The World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed to extend a waiver allowing Cambodia from enforcing intellectual property laws for another eight years, a WTO confirmed during IP Day 13 June 2013.

Proponents hailed the decision as a means to allow Cambodia access to products and technology needed for development, while critics took the slightly different view that the lack of protections would stifle economic growth.

Concerned by the amount of pirated products in Cambodia, Pily Wong, a Microsoft representative in the country and President of the Information Communication and Technology Business Association in Phnom Penh, says the WTO extension can deter foreign investment, limit innovation and create an unequal playing field for local competitors.

“Local companies are making software for point of sale or payroll, but when they go to visit customers, those customers say, ‘why would I buy your software when I can buy international or US-made software for $2?’” he said.

On the other side of the issue is Professor Brook Baker of Boston-based Northeastern University, who said waiver negotiations amounted to “relentless bullying” by US and EU interests.

He says intellectual property laws can block access to affordable educational resources, inhibit the transfer of technology and restrict gains in important areas of development, such as agriculture and climate change.

“For Cambodia, it may now reconsider some of the commitments its made during its accession agreement to the WTO, and review any existing IP legislation to determine whether such legislation is in its interests or not,” Baker said.

Products commonly protected by intellectual property are books, music, software and films. Pharmaceuticals, which have their own 2016 deadline, are excluded from Tuesday’s decision.

Microsoft’s Wong said access to pirated goods may help transfer skills more cheaply in the short term, but without foreign investment, there will be a lack of sustainable employment opportunities.

“If not protected, companies like Apple, for example, have a lot of intellectual property they need to protect in the production process, so they won’t be setting up plants here because they are afraid that their intellectual property will get stolen” he said. Var Roth San, director of the intellectual property department at the Ministry of Commerce, welcomed the extension.

“I do believe that if our economy keeps growing, we definitely can meet the deadline.”

Roth San said that while it isn’t difficult in establishing rules through laws and regulations, the lack of resources to implement them is the challenge.

“Why don’t we implement it now? Because we don’t have enough human resources, and we don’t have enough materials, and our budget is limited so we cannot go everywhere to teach people . . . about intellectual property,” he said.

The WTO’s decision marks the second time it has extended the waiver since 2006. The new deadline is July 1, 2021.

Source: Phnom Penh Post | June 13, 2013 | By: Daniel de Carteret

Cambodia Far From IP Targets

Cambodia is still a way off implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on intellectual property rights, despite a deadline to do so in just over a month.

At the end of June, the group of the world’s 49 least developed countries (LDCs), including Cambodia, run out of time on an al­ready extended exemption that means they are not obliged to enforce copyright and prevent vendors from selling pirated or counterfeit goods.

In March, members of the WTO Council for Trade-related Aspects for Intellectual Property Rights, agreed in principle with a request from LDCs to extend the deadline, accepting that poorer countries lack the capacity to comply with the rules. Talks are still ongoing to negotiate an extension.

The deadline has already been extended once, from 2005 to this year, and in Cambodia at least, the availability of goods in breach of intellectual property rules—counterfeit medicines, fake fashion brands, pirated books, movies, music and computer software—continues unabated.

If the deadline is not extended, Cambodia could be at risk of trade sanctions being implemented by the WTO if another member state files a complaint against the country.

Var Roth San, director of the intellectual property department at the Commerce Ministry, said Cambodia still lacked the resources to enforce intellectual property and was therefore hoping that the deadline would be delayed.

“The state doesn’t have enough money to hire many officials to work on it and the work is mounting every day,” Mr. Roth San said, explaining that officials with the necessary English skills to enforce intellectual property were loath to accept the civil servants wage on offer for such work.

A national strategy had been drawn up on the issue, and would be enacted after the national election in July, he said.

Pily Wong, chief representative and country manager for Microsoft in Cambodia and president of the ICT Business Association, said that 95 percent of software used in Cambodia is pirated, preventing both international firms and local startups from being successful here. He said the government has shown some willingness to act, but progress to enforce the rules has been slow.

“The Cambodian government is well structured; all the enforcement arms are there. It’s about the good will of the government,” he said, adding that while action has been taken against intellectual property breaches, it has only occurred after a complaint has been filed.

“The law enforcers are telling the intellectual property rights owners that if they want them to enforce, you should place a complaint,” Mr. Wong said, explaining that the economic police or government officials involved are known to ask for money in return for enforcing the rules. “I think everybody knows that in Cam­bodia, relationships and connections are very important,” he said.

Mike Gaertner, operations officer at Sabay Digital Corporation, which runs media operations including online gaming in Cambodia, said the government was right not to consider intellectual property rights its top priority in improving the business environment.

“I don’t see many people in Cam­bodia struggling or having a failing business because of this,” he said. “It is more that it’s being pushed by international corporations to protect their intellectual property.”

Professor Brook Baker, an academic at the school of law at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, who authored a petition of academics calling on WTO members to extend the deadline, said by email that for a country like Cam­bodia to comply with the rules was “quite an onerous responsibility.”

It would involve setting up functioning patent and trademark offices, and training government officials, lawyers and judicial officials to recognize, apply and en­force intellectual property rights, he said.

Countries should be exempt until they are no longer an LDC, a U.N.-defined category, he said. Mr. Baker said that European countries and the U.S. were negotiating “in bad faith” to force poorer states to enforce rules that will not benefit them.

“This extraordinarily burdensome, costly, and time-consuming process is established essentially to benefit foreign right holders because experience shows that [intellectual property] offices, for example Patent Offices, deal primarily (over 95%) with patent applications from foreign entities,” Mr. Baker said.

Source: Cambodia Daily | May 27, 2013 | By: Simon Lewis & Chin Chan