IIPA Assessment of Indonesia Effort to be Removed from Priority Watch List

JAKARTA: International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), an organization that deals with intellectual property has assessed that Indonesia’s effort to acquit themselves from USTR Priority Watch List (PWL). IIPA is an organization whose member is consist of 5 associations with regards to United States Copyright. IIPA, have recommended that Indonesia is not yet ready to be removed from PWL and should for the year of 2022, remain in the list.

This recommendation, based on an IIPA press release that is released last month, was based on an assessment of the enforcement, legal protection and copyright law system in Indonesia that is made by five IIPA members, namely the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Entertainment of Software Association (ESA), Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), Motion Picture Association (MPA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

This recommendation is made as a response to a request by USTR to IIPA to create an assessment on both the developments and the current situation to both the enforcement and protection of the copyright law system in Indonesia. In the end, IIPA have found that Indonesia still experiences many copyrights infringement and the penalties imposed to the copyright violators are too lenient. Both of these further convince IIPA of Indonesia substandard copyright enforcement.

IIPA have a strong influence in determining a country legibility to be included or removed from an USTR list that have ties to enforcement and protection of copyright law. Their strong influence comes from their contribution to the United States economy. This has resulted that almost all of the IIPA recommendations have been accepted by USTR.

Despite the recommendation is already received by the USTR, Indonesia still have time. United States have always made announcement every year in regard to which country is in the PWL and the country that manage to successfully remove themselves from it every April. Indonesia still has 2 months to make an argument that the growth of their Intellectual Property protection from last year to now is clearly sufficient enough for Indonesia to not be in PWL.

It is recommended that the relevant party related to Indonesian government should made an immediate attempt to lobby to USTR to informed them that Indonesia has made great strides towards improvements in both the enforcement and protection of intellectual property along with proves that could solidify their argument. (jpk/bdp/su)