KUWAIT CITY, 31 August 2004 — Kuwait, apparently acting under pressure from the United States, has moved to double jail terms and fines for abuse of intellectual property rights, the KUNA news agency quoted the information minister as saying yesterday.
Mohammad Abulhassan said the government will soon submit a bill to Parliament to amend the emirate’s copyright law to increase fines from $1,700 to $3,400 and double prison terms to two years.
The amendment has already been approved by the Cabinet and Parliament is expected to pass it when it reconvenes in October.
The United States has repeatedly warned Kuwait over the lack of enforcement of copyright legislation passed by the emirate’s Parliament in December 2000.
Kuwait has remained for years on the US “watch list” of countries failing to promptly enforce intellectual property right (IPR) laws to prevent piracy.
But earlier this year, the emirate was moved to the “priority watch list” of countries where rampant piracy exists and which do not provide adequate level of IPR protection or enforcement.
A US government report on the issue warned that Washington will “consider all options, including but not limited to initiation of dispute settlement consultations, in cases where countries do not appear to have implemented fully their obligations under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.”
Abulhassan told the Cabinet on Sunday that 124 cases of piracy were referred to court in the past few months.
Information Ministry officials carry out regular raids on shops suspected of piracy, but this has failed to deter the flourishing business.
Despite such raids, Kuwait’s numerous shopping malls remain full of stalls of pirated videotapes, CD-ROMs, computer software and games, all selling for a fraction of the value of the originals.
The head of Kuwait’s Intellectual Property Right Protection Society, Sheikh Salman Dawood Al-Salman, hailed the minister’s step as necessary to bolster the emirate’s image abroad and lure technology and telecom companies to settle here.
More Remains Identified
Remains of 10 more Kuwaitis who were executed in Iraq during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis were buried yesterday, a day after they were positively identified.
They were among more than 600 Kuwaitis and other nationals who disappeared in the period between Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the US-led Gulf War that liberated it in February of the following year.
