On May 20 2003, it was announced that the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) is reviewing the current IP laws of Singapore. This undertaking follows shortly after the historic signing of the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) between US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in the US on May 6 2003, which includes a chapter on IP legislation.
The USSFTA's IP chapter, which covers a wide range of IP issues, establishes the following agreements between the two countries with respect to the areas of trade marks, patents and copyrights:
For trade marks, it is interesting and indeed exciting to learn that Singapore shall be extending trade mark registration to include non-visual trade marks such as smell marks and sound marks.
In the patents arena, the term of protection for pharmaceutical products will be extended to compensate for unreasonable delays in the granting of marketing approvals. In addition, there are to be tighter controls with regard to the parallel importation of pharmaceutical products.
Where copyright is concerned, new legislation will make it illegal for third parties to circumvent IP protection measures to exploit digital content, "significant" and "willful" infringements of copyright will be considered a criminal offence, and clearer rules governing legal incentives for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to remove infringing materials from their networks and systems will be drawn out.
It has been reported that most of the IP chapter's legislation is scheduled to take effect after March 1 2004 but some provisions will come into force in the later part of this year.
At a media conference, Liew Woon Yin, the director-general of IPOS, commented that the USSFTA will result in significant changes to Singapore's IP laws, and that the new provisions will serve to encourage entrepreneurship, investment, job creation and growth in the country's science, technology and creative industries. To prepare the local business community for the IP law changes under the USSFTA, IPOS is looking into conducting seminars in an awareness campaign to help the industry understand the impending changes in IP legislation and to educate businesses on how they can leverage on these changes.
Further to this, IPOS is forming and leading a high-level task force which includes prominent business leaders and the heads of pertinent government ministries, from whom the agency will seek input as part of its process of reviewing the IP regime in Singapore.
It is hoped that the review and the new IP chapter initiatives resulting from the USSFTA will serve as a platform for Singapore's drive to be a global IP hub.
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| Gladys Mirandah |
