(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) On April 26 every year, the world celebrates World Intellectual Property (IP) Day in order to promote discussion on the role of IP in encouraging innovation and creativity. Muscat Daily spoke to four lawyers to shed light on IP in the sultanate and the challenges that lie ahead.
Riyadh al Balushi
A columnist at Muscat Daily and an assistant legal advisor at the Ministry of Legal Affairs
Intellectual property is a tool that provides many creative industries with the legal mechanism to ensure that they can justify researching and developing new technologies that change the way we live to the better. Intellectual property also operates as a mechanism to protect consumers from being misled by counterfeit products so that it ensures, for example, that when you buy a certain medicine, the product will in fact be the one described on the label. Some form of intellectual property protection is also essential in the development of culture and arts and the way we express ourselves creatively.
Copyright law around the world, not only in Oman, is facing a lot of challenges in coping with the way technology has enabled us to create, remix, and share culture in a way that nobody could have foreseen. In many ways, copyright law is no longer compatible with the way content is consumed on the Internet and therefore, it can act as a barrier to creativity instead of facilitating it. This is especially a problem in Oman because our law is extremely protective of qualifying works and provides very little room for the kind of copying that is essential for the development of society.
I think it could be easier for people to appreciate why intellectual property is important if we can show them how it affects people that they can relate to. It is difficult to convince people to care about intellectual property when you tell them that an international company such as Microsoft is losing a little bit of money because of piracy, but it will be more convincing if we have campaigns that illustrate how Omani SMEs and artists are not able to survive because of piracy.
When it comes to protection, I believe that the Omani intellectual property laws provide more than enough legal rights for authors and innovators. What the law needs to do is provide reasonable rights for the users of protected works so that society can benefit from the protected works to create more works that reflect the identity and culture of the country rather than push us to become a society that consumes culture without producing anything in return. I believe this can be done by providing more exceptions under copyright law for transformational uses that do not unreasonably affect the commercial interests of the copyright owners.
One of the biggest challenges that Oman faces in the field of combating piracy is the lack of legal alternatives for pirated content. There is no legal way for an individual in Oman to watch an internationally popular TV show such as Game of Thrones or Suits and therefore it is difficult to ask the users to stop illegally downloading them when there is no legal method for them to watch something that the whole world is watching. I believe that one of the keys to combat piracy is providing legal methods for consuming content priced reasonably if we really want people to stop illegally downloading copyright protected works.
Manal al Adawi
Intellectual property and information technology lawyer with experience in the oil & gas and telecommunication sectors, and also an SME owner
IP is important, both on a personal and commercial level. Being able to protect innovations with IP rights provides individuals with a sense of pride and encourages them to engage in more creative ventures. On a commercial level, IP is perhaps one of the most underutilised company assets. It is crucial that companies become more aware of their IP because it is a critical resource that creates greater returns on investment and provides advantages over competitors both quantitative and qualitative.
For example, a company with an extensive patent portfolio is able to attract more high-quality, research-focused employees.
One of the IP challenges in a close-knit society such as ours is that confidentiality and trade secrets are so difficult to maintain. Employees, in particular, need to understand the importance of treating corporate information with care and of not sharing confidential data with competitors.
Businesses need to clearly emphasise to employees what know-how they obtain on the job is actually confidential information, in order to minimise even inadvertent trade secret theft.
Raising awareness about IP has to be done through top-down strategies. The government should continue encouraging IP creation and protection by companies, and in particular SMEs, as well as talented researchers in the community.
In large corporations, higher-level management need to adopt strategic commitments towards fully utilising their IP assets and acquiring new ones, in addition to rewarding employees who generate inventions or creative works. The IP laws in Oman are thorough, straightforward, and in line with international standards. The issue at present is that so few are taking advantage of these IP laws to gain the benefit they afford.
From personal experience, a shortcoming in the laws related to IP is that company names in Oman have to be ''real'' or existing Arabic words. This significantly inhibits the creativity and individuality of company trade names, generally intended to be protected later on as trademarks. As a result, unique Omani business names cannot be commercially registered which excludes the "Coca-Colas" and "Ikeas" of the sultanate. While having differing company names and trademarks is possible, this is not always the ideal situation.
Fatima Makki
Trainee solicitor in London at an international firm, she has worked in the firm's Muscat branch for two years
IP can be an extremely valuable asset. In an increasingly digital world, with our interests as private individuals as well as members of virtually any organisation, intellectual property is becoming more of a crucial resource.
A great example is 'Brand Oman'. The logo has become synonymous with all things great about Oman, and has built a lot of goodwill in the amazing Omani tourism industry and has helped many local businesses to flourish.
Lack of concrete resources on the Omani IP regime is one of the main challenges. We have been lucky to have the World Intellectual Property Organisation - in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) as well as the Ministry of Heritage and Culture - organise and host useful workshops and seminars on IP, which I have attended and found very engaging and informative. However, those were aimed at members of the (small but growing) Omani IP industry, who are already aware of the concept and principles of IP.
I think it would be useful for similar organisations to conduct similar learning exercises in places where they could address a legitimate need. For example, Knowledge Oasis Muscat is nearly at full capacity with Omani and international telecommunications, media and technology companies - three industries where IP is taken very seriously. Hosting seminars or Q&A sessions with government IP officials or judges with experience in local IP cases would give potential Omani entrepreneurs more certainty when it comes to knowing their rights.
I'm not suggesting that only businesses should be interested in IP. Oman's cultural scene is growing, and artists or aspiring artists should be aware of their rights, which directly affect their ability to make a living from their work.
The Industrial Property Law is one of Oman's most heavily used IP laws, so I think it would be very useful for it to be reviewed and updated regularly in order to fit in more with our current economic reality.
I once conducted some research with the IP department at MoCI about the number of IP applications submitted to their department. The number of industrial design rights, trademarks and optional copyright applications were relatively high. However, there was a negligible number of patent applications. There are so many possible reasons for this. What I took away from this experience was that we simply don't have enough accessible information on the IP process in Oman, which can allow us to foster some home-grown innovation more effectively.
Jalpa Mehta
Corporate commercial and IP lawyer, Said al Shahry &
Partners (SASLO)
Protection of IP is important at an individual and national level. At an individual level as what is created by our intellect is our property and failure to tag our property with our name will give others chance to exploit and use it for their benefit. Therefore, to enjoy moral and financial benefits of our creation it is important to seal them with ''IP – Ideas Protected'' preventing unauthorised use. With the current trend of globalisation, it is vital for every nation to balance protection and maintenance of its exclusivity and uniqueness, at the same time to attract foreign investment while presenting its IP intensive assets. Thus, it becomes vital for every nation to protect its national brand and present it with confidence beyond the borders of country of origin.
The biggest challenge according to me is actually the simplest thing which a lot of people are aware of but very few understand and value its importance. It is climbing the IP ladder till the top. While lot of them take the first step of ''inventing ideas'', some climb the second step of ''initiating protection of those ideas'' but very few reach the top of the ladder which is ''implementing IP - ideas protected'' which actually converts ideas to assets and has the capacity of yielding profits to the creator.
Generally, the unawareness about IP in all the sectors is due to lack of information on what qualifies as IP and why it should be protected, in addition to where, when and the ways to protect it. Therefore, having an IP one-stop shop where all such information could be obtained and queries could be solved would be helpful. Additionally, frequent IP open discussions, workshops, quizzes and informative activities could be conducted.
As lawyers, it becomes our corporate social responsibility to initiate as well as assist the ministerial bodies in their efforts to spread more awareness. SASLO has always been a step ahead in fulfilling its CSR initiatives and on the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day 2014, we are undertaking an IP awareness campaign whereby I, my colleague Eman al Shahry and Riyadh al Balushi, assistant legal advisor at Ministry of Legal Affairs will be holding a series of workshops and short lectures to students, researchers, SMEs, and business owners.
The value of IP intensive assets that Oman possesses and the need to protect those assets was realised as early as 1976 when the National Heritage Protection Law was promulgated. Thereafter, IPR laws were enacted, Oman acceded to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), several WIPO administered treaties were ratified, Free Trade Agreements were entered into to further facilitate protection of IP rights. Thus, Oman already has a robust legislation in place, the runway is ready for the take-off, only the IP owners, the pilots, have to kickstart the engine.
One message I would like to send out is, protecting IP is like raising a baby. A mother gives birth to a baby, then she nurtures and protects the baby from others and raises him to be an individual. And finally when the baby grows, it supports the mother in her old age.
Similarly, we give birth to an idea, we nurture and develop it to take the form of a product, we have to invest in it and protect it from others by IP instruments whereby it turns in to an asset which finally supports the creator. We have to believe in our own