Protect IPR, protect Indonesia

Protect IPR, protect Indonesia Rachmat Gobel ;  Vice Chairman of the Employers’ Association of Indonesia (Apindo) and President Commissioner of the PT Panasonic Gobel Indonesia

JAKARTA POST, 17 Oktober 2012

Indonesia’s democratic achievements since 1998 are now a part of world, and certainly of Asian, political history. Our economic advances are recognized by our membership of the G-20, a familial gathering of the world’s most influential nations. However, what has not kept pace with these developments is Indonesia’s legal infrastructure, which connects the dots between politics and economics and provides the foundation for change, underpinned by stability. Improving this legal infrastructure is a challenge that lies ahead. Indonesians and foreigners alike bemoan this gap in the country’s evolution in the post-New Order era. The Asia Foundation defines a healthy legal system as creating an environment which respects individual rights and enforces contractual obligations, makes property rights secure and transferable, and ensures that public decision-making is transparent and predictable. That kind of an environment is taken for granted in most developed countries and without it, a nation like Indonesia will be condemned forever in the international race for respectability and success. The image of a country affects its attractiveness as a destination for foreign capital. Respectable businesses cannot afford to run the risk of not knowing if their rights are protected against arbitrary bureaucratic changes to the rules. Businesses want certainty. Strong legal infrastructure makes the enforcement of rights concrete and predictable. This is particularly true of intellectual property rights (IPR). With concrete property rights, the man in the street acknowledges the moral and legal reality that he cannot take what belongs to others without their permission — because that would be theft. Amazingly, however, this logic simply vanishes when it comes to IPR. Pirated computer software and Hollywood and Bollywood DVDs are sold in Indonesian shopping malls in blatant disregard of the law, as if stolen intellectual property is not property, or not stolen. To the casual observer, Indonesia is home to a giant thieves’ market of intellectual pirates. That’s perhaps a slight exaggeration, but there is good reason why the United States has placed us on an ignominious black list of the 13 worst countries for violation of IPR and copyright. Things have got so bad that Andrea Hirata has declared that his next book will be in English. Rampant piracy is set to drive the best-selling Indonesian author from Bahasa Indonesia itself! This is the intellectual equivalent of driving a man from a village by taking away his home, but the public imagination is hardly as incensed by Hirata’s predicament as it would be by the story of a villager made homeless by an egregious violation of his property rights. Hirata’s case dramatizes the new edge to an old story. It is now the turn of Indonesians themselves to face the consequences of IPR violation. And they are suffering on a national scale. Because of lack of IPR protection, Indonesia has missed out on the booming global software business, with Bangalore in India positioning itself as Asia’s Sillicon Valley. Indonesia is not short of software expertise, but this industry cannot survive, let alone flourish, without the protection of the intellectual talent on which it is crucially based. Another example was highlighted in Vice President Boediono’s speech to mark International IPR Day in May. He noted the pathetically small number of new patents and trademarks registered each year compared to the size of the economy. Clearly, as Indonesia moves away from a resource-dependent economy to a knowledge-driven one, it will have to tackle the IPR violations that deter innovation and creativity. Unlike Hirata, who, for all his troubles, can escape into English, small business enterprises, particularly in traditional industries such as handicrafts, have nowhere to run. The pirating barbarians are out to kill them and a way of life that does so much to preserve Indonesian culture at home and abroad. As if this is not enough, indigenous Indonesian food such as tempe ends up being patented abroad! Admittedly, the government is trying to tackle our IPR problems. It has set up a task force to amend and upgrade laws to bring them into compliance with global standards. However, it will be many years before these amendments come into force. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the new laws will be enforced effectively. More heartening is the decision by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to establish a new Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry, led by Mari Elka Pangestu, who handled the creative economy in her earlier capacity as trade minister. She put small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in touch with the National Export Promotion Board to help them learn the benefits of IPR, and to help with the registration of their rights. One of Indonesia’s strengths is its handicrafts industry, which unites our far-flung archipelagic nation under a coalition of batik-makers, wood-carvers and other artisans. This industry is driven by SMEs more than large corporations. Stronger IPR protection will help SMEs to be more creative and innovative. This is the right way to go. However, so long as IPR violations are tolerated when it comes to foreigners — and not only in the computer software industry — it is unlikely that Indonesians as a people will appreciate the need to protect the work of their fellow-countrymen. And this mindset, to return to the point which we made at the start, is where the crux of the matter lies. Lawlessness is the bane of weak and struggling states. It is simply intolerable in strong and mature states. Similarly, it is one thing for poor countries to turn a blind eye to the piracy of exorbitantly-priced textbooks produced abroad, books without which their students cannot hope to get a foot in the international door. Piracy is still wrong, but its provenance is important. However, it is unconscionable for a rising economy to behave like a victimized one and treat IPR as an optional luxury. It is not. Rising Indonesians owe it to ourselves as much as to others to protect intellectual property, whether foreign or indigenous. This should be a part of our new international branding. Now is the time to start, and start in earnest. ●