Mega Internet Portal News

July 13, 2001

The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the Baltic States Leaves Something To Be Desired

A study carried out among entrepreneurs in the three Baltic States by the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights (CIPR) finds that there is an apparent lack of capability to enforce fairly good laws protecting intellectual property rights, reports BNS.

The CIPR study claims that Baltic enterprises regard the question of protecting their intellectual property rights to be a serious challenge.

The only phenomenon causing more concern than unprotected intellectual property rights is, according to the CIPR study, the bureaucracy of government agencies.

The heads of 102 enterprises, who were surveyed in the Baltic states, were also concerned about state corruption, inadequate investment laws, and the difficulties involved in dealing with the courts.

With regard to the protection of intellectual property rights, these leading executives regard the most important matter to be the protection of trademarks. Of slightly less importance is the concern expressed by the firms over product counterfeiting, patent protection, and questions related to the protection of copyrights.

Another cause for concern is piracy involving internet domain names. Of the top executives from the three Baltic States, the Estonian executives mentioned this problem more often than did Latvian and Lithuanian executives.

Among state institutions, entrepreneurs rated their patent offices' endeavors to be the strongest in the field of protecting intellectual property rights. The most wanting were found to be the agencies directly involved with disciplining offenders.

Compared with Latvia and Lithuania, Estonian top executives differed in one major aspect - namely, local entrepreneurs felt that the Ministries of Culture and Justice were doing a good job, and the work of the courts was also seen in a fairly positive light.

All those surveyed believe that although the laws protecting intellectual property rights meet the requirements and are fairly good, various government agencies - among them customs and the police - do not regard the actual implementation of these laws to be of primary importance, and this is partially due to the lack of resources and opportunities.

In the course of the study conducted at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year, the top management representatives from 49 Latvian, 29 Lithuanian, and 24 Estonian enterprises were surveyed. The results of the study will be released in Riga on Friday by the non-governmental organization CIPR, which is active in the Baltic States and other countries of the former USSR.