Government acts on IP law violations

GOVERNMENT is reviewing the Copyright Act as part of measures to tackle rampant piracy and theft of intellectual property amid calls for authors and publishers to also review their book prices.

Textbook piracy is a serious problem in Zimbabwe with some criminal syndicates publicly printing and photocopying copyrighted literature and selling these in bulk on streets and pavements at give-away prices than what is charged at formal shops.

In an interview, Zimbabwe Intellectual Property Office (Zipo) chief registrar, Mr Willie Mushayi, described piracy in the country as an organized crime by syndicates, which was also well-funded.

Zipo, which falls under the Department of Deeds and Intellectual Property, is administered by the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. Its secondary function is that of an intellectual property registry.

Its main mandate is registration and maintenance of registers in respect of trade marks, patents, industrial designs, geographical indications and integrated circuit layout designs in line with the respective local statutes and international treaties.

A geographical indication (GI) is a distinctive sign used to identify a product whose quality, reputation or other such characteristics relate to its geographical origin.

Mr Mushayi said the process of amending the Copyright Act began last year but got affected by the festive season break. He said the process will now move forward since Cabinet has resumed sitting.

“I am happy to announce that we are reviewing the Copyright Act itself so that it takes care of some of these aspects,” said Mr Mushayi.

He said the reason why piracy is flourishing was because there is no intervention by the owners of the rights, publishers and the authors but his office was now correcting that so that they could then be able to enforce their rights.

“We are busy organising them so that they can be present in the market. They used to be present about five or so years ago but the collecting society that was formed specifically to deal with issues of writers and publishers did not succeed, mainly because the publishers withdrew their support because it wasn’t meeting their needs and expectations,” said Mr Mushayi.

“So, we have proceeded to organise them so that they can meet and agree on forming another collecting society and we are at an advanced stage now. Publishers have come together and approached us and said they now want to be present in the market to control this.”

He said piracy remains a menace that needs to be arrested and ensure respect for intellectual property rights.

“We must realise that piracy is an organised crime, these people are well organised and well-funded. They have state-of-the-art equipment, sometimes imported and are doing this not on a small scale but large scale.

“They are capitalising on the gap that has been left by the book retailers who are no longer as present as they used to as well as the issue of the collecting society whose duty is to protect the rights of the publishers and authors, issue licences so that it’s not a free for all,” said Mr Mushayi.

He said the duty of Zipo is to make sure everybody in the market behaves by supervising the collecting societies to make sure that as they enforce their rights, they do not infringe on other people’s rights as well but that has not been smooth mainly because there has been a missing link, which is the collecting society.

“We are now working closely with these sectors (authors and publishers) and I am confident that in the first-half of this year, we will be having a collecting society and then we can proceed to train them on how to enforce these rights,” said Mr Mushayi.

“We are also engaging the publishers so that they do not shortchange themselves by overpricing their products because it forces people to retreat to the black market and we don’t want that.”

According to the National Association of Secondary School Heads (Nash) national president, Mr Arthur Maphosa, some textbooks are priced far higher than what is charged as school fees in a majority of day schools in Zimbabwe, a scenario that may force some schools to resort to photocopying some textbooks.

He, however, said piracy can never be condoned as it was a criminal offence and infringes upon the rights of the authors, who, ironically were at one time their students.

“As Nash we will not be part of those that condone book piracy, after all, we are the producers of these book writers as their teachers. We give them the skill when they are our learners so that they become better writers so why really would we be part of the people stifling such kind of progress?” said Mr Maphosa.

“We would implore our members not to support this so that those who would have applied their minds to come up with such content are supported.”

“You will realise that in almost 90 percent of our day schools, fees that are being charged are less than the cost of a single copy of some of these books, you find a book costing US$100 while school fees is US$70 if not less. “Pirates are taking advantage of this and even schools will prefer to buy one or two of these expensive books and photocopies. We do not condone this but it’s happening on the ground, all because of these biting prices. We call upon book suppliers to be considerate,” said Mr Maphosa.