TIPS^®  Taiwan Intellectual Property Special

Commercial Scale Piracy Will Be Publicly Prosecuted

Contrary to the removal of criminal penalties for patent infringement, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) is now drafting amendments to the Copyright Law, following the instruction of the Executive Yuan, “extending the scope of public prosecution and strengthening criminal penalties” for Copyright infringement.

The current Copyright Law only publicly prosecutes vocational copyright infringers. In order to combat piracy, the Copyright Law amendments intends to differentiate profit-seeking and not-for-profit illegal reproduction, namely, piracy. Criminal penalties for not-for-profit infringement will be removed and not-for-profit infringement will be solved by civil liabilities. On the other hand, profit-seeking infringement will be publicly prosecuted, with more severe criminal penalties.

However, legal experts believe that copyright should be private rights; in addition to interests of copyright owners, public interest shall also be taken into account. To effectively protect intellectual property, they nonetheless believe that criminal penalties for copyright infringement cannot be completely removed. Increasing criminal fines may be an appropriate measure. For protecting intellectual property, international conventions only require each country take “effective” enforcement mechanisms. Individual countries can decided whether the infringement should subject to public prosecution.

TIPO engages in collecting relevant legislation in other countries, and will hold public hearings for comments in order to draft an appropriate Copyright Law amendment.