Results of Raiding Pirating Drop, Suspected to be Connected with the New Code of Criminal Procedure.

   Since January of this year till now, the establishment of the second general corps of intellectual property rights protection (保二總隊保護智財權警察大隊) has made remarkable achievements on raiding pirating; however, due to the enforcement of the newly amended Code of Criminal Procedure effective as of September, results of raiding pirating have dropped for more than 50%.  After the amendment, besides that the police officers will be requested to appear in court to be questioned by defendant’s attorneys, the collection of relevant evidence and procedures has also become stricter.  If any error occurs in the procedure, the court will deny the collection. In that case, the efforts made by the police officers will become in vain, which is the main reason that the results of raiding pirating drop.

Days ago, the director of the Intellectual Property Office Lian Sheng Cai, during an interior conference held in Ministry of Economic Affairs, stated that the reason that results of raiding pirating continue dropping could possibly be that the preliminary goal of raiding pirating has already been achieved.  Gao Jiang Liao, the leader of the above mentioned corps, expressed that Taiwan has spent a sizable amount of manpower in raiding pirating.  Currently pressure from the U.S. is concentrated on the matter that the punishment sentenced to right infringers is light. For the time being, owing that dealers committing the offense of pirating can be bailed out on the day when they were caught, they continued the illegal selling again on the next day, which causes the problem that the government make severe punishment with an empty effect. The issue concerning CD pirating equipments is another main concern of the U.S., which now can be legally confiscated or destroyed as soon as they are discovered.