April 26 each year the world celebrates the World Intellectual Property Day. This day was also marked in Azerbaijan: specially for this day, Baku hosted a conference on the theme "IT-IP: protection and transfer of new knowledge", organized by the Copyright Agency and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan.
The participants in the face of known scientific figures, MPs of Azerbaijan, as well as representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, along with the problems of information technology, intellectual property protection, discussed the theft of tangible and intangible heritage, as well as intellectual property belonging to Azerbaijan, , and in this regard, the issues of falsification of history.
According to a study conducted by the Copyright Agency of Azerbaijan, the country's GDP from industry, based on copyright, is 3.6 percent compared to 2.2 percent five years ago. The study used economic and mathematical model "Solo", of which main difference is that the author uses the technological progress as a driver of economic growth along with such factors of production as labor and capital. The model describes the impact of the above three factors on economic growth.
If growth rate of economy was ensured only through the knowledge by about seven percent in 2004, this figure was more than 20.3 percent in 2008. In developed countries this figure ranges from 4 to 12 percent.
The Copyright Agency head Kamran Imanov believes that the orientation of Azerbaijan's growing economy on the economy of knowledge occurs in all spheres. Azerbaijan has a stable economic growth, in which, above all, according to recent study, issues related to intellectual property, protection and ensuring copyrights play a great role.
The State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patents of Azerbaijan in I quarter registered 363 intellectual property rights. So, for the quarter, it has registered 333 trademarks, 18 inventions, 9 industrial designs and 3 utility models.
With regards to piracy, the piracy rates have dropped by 10-20 percent in Azerbaijan in recent years. Azerbaijan intends to reduce the rate of pirated products to 40 percent, Imanov added.
"We are modifying existing legislation and adopt new laws for this end. Centers will be created in the country to ensure intellectual property rights," Imanov said. The center will have functions related to the law.
So, over the past 5 years, the piracy in book publishing has reduced from 61 to 40 percent, in the software industry - from 96 to 88 percent. Since early this year, a 10 percent reduction has been recorded in the level of piracy in the market of audio/video - up to 60 percent. Reduction is reduction, however, significant progress in this regard has not been reached in the country.
Currently, as part of strengthening measures to combat piracy and protect intellectual property, the Copyright Agency of Azerbaijan continues to take measures to strengthen the legislative framework. As known, in the near future, the Parliament of Azerbaijan will begin to discuss the bill on ensuring intellectual property rights and combating piracy. According to experts, this kind of law is adopted in the CIS for the first time.
The law on ensuring intellectual property rights and combating piracy is intended to regulate the protection of the rights of intellectual property holders, and determine the administrative and judicial proceedings relating to the protection of their interests and preventing law violations.
The third chapter of the law fully deals with combating piracy. This chapter provides specific rules related to the digitally encoded works, phonograms and other intellectual property. The law will also prevent the illegal use of information technology.
In accordance with the provisions of the law, the court can make a decision on the prevention of sale of pirated copies or counterfeit goods imported with the violation of intellectual property rights, and on payment of the appropriate amount by the persons, who intentionally or unintentionally violate intellectual property rights, to compensate damage inflicted to right holder.
Substantial measure to combat piracy will be the fact that all the products in Azerbaijan, including the subject of copyright, related and other rights will be equipped with special control holograms. Products sold without these holograms will be considered pirated. Today the Copyright Agency is working on this idea, collaborating with the best European institutions, created a business model and discusses aspects of its work, the country allocated the necessary funds for this purpose.
The difficult issue is to regulate digital rights in the Internet, which have their own characteristics. They differ in that the Internet has no mechanism to protect copyright. There's only digital content. And there is a problem - the content is constantly changing, increasing, and therefore its protection becomes more complicated.
Today, the World Intellectual Property Organization is already wondering how to deal with copyright in the digital era, despite that the world organization has adopted a law that protects the copyrights in the Internet space. However, in fact it turned out that it is not executed. Copyright Agency of Azerbaijan has also developed and submitted to the appropriate agencies the proposals on copyright protection on the Internet. "Unfortunately, 95 percent of the copyrights of digital content on the Internet constantly taking new forms are being violated.
This deals with the music digital content, digital books, digital television and other copyright of digital products. Azerbaijan proposes to create a collective license on the Internet that will allow to use digital content without author's permission by paying a minimal share of the value of content," said Imanov.
All the above-mentioned lead to the conclusion that the situation with the protection of copyright and piracy in the country is of concern and it needs to combat it. Particularly as the Internet develops, it needs to pay more attention to reliability and security of Internet content and intellectual property transmitted through the Internet. And this problem is not only for Azerbaijan, but also for the whole world.