Intellectual property rights come into focus

Dubai: If the UAE wants to keep developing new ideas, it needs to toughen its execution of existing laws, two local experts say.

Lack of well-developed intellectual property laws often has the effect of stifling new innovation. The UAE recently ranked 29th in the world in intellectual property (IP) protections, but 72nd in capacity of innovation, according to The Arab World Competitiveness Report. "I think there has to be a connection of some kind," said Jayshree Gupta, a partner at the Dubai law offices of internationally-known DLA Piper.

It's not that the country hasn't developed its tools to fight the problem. Gupta said the UAE's IP laws were comparable to the laws in more developed countries in what they seek to cover.

At a recent event marking the World Intellectual Property Day in Dubai, Mohammad Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz, undersecretary of planning in the Ministry of Economy, said that the state policy to provide strict protection of the rights of intellectual property at the legislative and executive levels ranks the UAE among pioneering countries in preventing violations of intellectual property rights.

There hasn't been a need so far to develop the law to a higher degree of complexity, according to Gupta.

New issues

She also said that the civil courts were constantly facing new issues that haven't arisen before, and don't have previous precedence to rely on. That was the situation in a copyright case Gupta worked on recently where an artist claimed her art work had been stolen by a magazine publisher. The artist claimed that the magazine had altered her art but said that anyone looking at the magazine could recognise the work as hers. Gupta said the case was a learning experience for everyone involved.

Gupta also identified patents and industrial design as an area of intellectual property law that needs be developed further as the economy grows, which results in more indigenous innovation.

The biggest area where violation occurs is still in counterfeiting and trademark. Crackdowns on infringements in Dubai have been widely publicised. In a February raid, authorities seized 4,500 fake watches and 4,500 USB flash drives and memory sticks at a Dragon Mart stall.

Such trademark threats could damage investment into the area, said Omar Shteiwi, the chairman of the Brand Protection Group (BPG) and a regional adviser on intellectual property. The BPG is a Dubai-based organisation, whose members include multi-national companies such as Nestle and Unilever.

Shteiwi said the majority of the counterfeits found in the UAE are imported from Asia, but the imports include food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, a growing area of concern.

More laws aren't the solution, he said, but stricter enforcement. "The laws are sufficient to protect intellectual property in the UAE," Shteiwi said. "But if need to implement those laws to the book. If you do that, the achievement will be much bigger."

Facts: Major aspects ofintellectual property

Intellectual Property is an umbrella term for the legal protection given to items and processes created by people and companies. These works are often protected to encourage further innovations. Typical areas of intellectual property include:

- Copyrights, which protect creative works, such as movies, books and software;

- Trademarks, which involve a company's logo or an image associated with a company, such as McDonalds' 'Golden Arches';

- Patent law, which protects inventions and industrial processes, such as how to make a computer chip;

- Industrial Design, which protects how something looks, such as the design of a cell phone or even a article of clothing;

- Trade Secrets, which are a company's proprietary information, such as the formula for Coke.