Bangla on US watch list for IPR violation

Bangladesh has been put on the United States' watch list of countries that allow production of pirated versions of multi-media compact disks and digital video disks in violation of intellectual property rights, a report said in Dhaka on Monday.

According to an Office of the US Trade Representatives report titled 'Special 301', some pirate optical disk manufacturing plants migrated to Bangladesh from Pakistan after authorities launched a crackdown on the plants there.

A report published by the Daily Star said the USTR could now suggest to American entrepreneurs to withdraw their investments from the country or to impose a trade embargo due to its inclusion in the list.

The report said six optical disc plants producing pirated products are currently operating in Bangladesh and are exporting to India and Europe, besides saturating the local market.

Quoting unnamed officials, the Star said the National Security Intelligence on the request of US authorities carried out an investigation and found that two companies owned by Pakistani citizens did set up optical disk plants in Bangladesh.

It said both the units, AKA World Com and Sonic Enterprise Bangladesh Limited, were owned by two Pakistanis, one of whom set up a Tk 2 crore plant which can produce 50,000

discs a day.

The USTR report urged Bangladesh to introduce regulations controlling optical disc manufacturing so that authorities could issue licenses to manufacturers, and law enforcers can inspect the plants.

The USTR report also suggested that any plant found guilty of piracy be closed down and its owners prosecuted, saying Dhaka's response to the problem was "inadequate in terms of results from enforcement actions taken".

Commerce ministry officials said Bangladesh was first included on the watch list in 2004, but was later dropped following a negotiations with the USTR.

A joint secretary to the commerce ministry said the government decided to initiate lobbying with the US government in an attempt to keep Bangladesh off the watch list.

He said the ministry decided to engage the country's embassy in Washington to make concerned US authorities understand that as a member of the World Trade Organisation, the country was exempted from any kind of IPR obligation until 2013.

This year's Special 301 report places 43 countries on Priority Watch List, Watch List (WL), or Section 306 Monitoring List.