State of enforcement and the new Indonesian government

The new government seems to be setting new IP policies. Apparently there is a plan to increase the size of IP industries in the Indonesian economy up from 2% to 6% of GDP. Consequently the head of the IP Office announced this week that they will introduce new IPR enforcement measures in 2015.  This will include increased efforts to combat IP violation as well as increased sentences, more arrests and sanctions against landlords allowing fakes to be sold on their properties.

He referred in his announcement to copyright and a close reading of the comments suggests he is referring to the copyright law amendments passed under the last government.

The key is not new laws however it is practical enforcement. Until the police conduct raids  regularly without corruption, until the PPNS can build a bigger team that can conduct fast effective raids, until cases are passed to prosecutors for criminal prosecutions, then Indonesia will remain an enforcement laggard.

Some recent Police statistics show the conducted very few IP cases in recent years:

No.	Intellectual Property Cases	Year
		2012	2013	2014
1	Copyright	109	188	60
2	Patent	-	5	1
3	Trademark	96	64	35
4	Industrial Design	1	9	2
5	Trade Secret	1	-	-
Total		207	266	98

There are specific numbers broken out for DVD work for the copyright industries. Much will be software.

No.	Optical Disc (Copyright) Cases	Year
		2012	2013	2014
1	Optical disc cases	87	137	23
2	Optical discs seized	388.381 pcs	321.185 pcs	90.985 pcs
3	Duplication equipment seized	13	21	11

The IPO investigation team’s cases were as follows.

No.	Intellectual Property Cases	Year
		2012	2013	2014
1	Copyright	6	4	2
2	Patent	2	-	1
3	Trademark	23	15	6
4	Industrial Design	6	6	-
Total		37	19	9

Overall this shows a very low level of IP enforcement activity. By comparison in the Philippines and Thailand thousands of IP violation cases per year are brought. Indonesia’s cases are in the low few hundreds.