Taiwan-Japan Shared Experience In Online Infringement Prevention.　ISP And Online Auction Providers Shall Work Together To Be Free From Liabilities.

  Taiwan and Japan are now both grappling with piracy and counterfeits circulating online and seeing them as the targets of IP protection and legislation.  On October 19, 2006, East Asia Relations Commission, Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), and Interchange Association Japan co-hosted the “Seminar on Taiwan/Japan Online Infringement Prevention”, in which the representatives from Taiwan and Japan expressed their great anxiety for the rampancy of files downloading and online infringement that goes with online auctions.

  For the legislation with respect to online infringement prevention, representatives from Taiwan and Japan indicated that ISP and online auction providers should forthwith practice the “cooperation/take-down” measure to avoid legal liabilities whenever they sight or someone reports for counterfeits circulating on their websites.

  TIPO asserted that online infringement would not come up without ISP’s assistance although ISP is not the act doer of an infringement.  For this reason, ISP should be liable for online infringement to some extent.

  Mr. Akiba, Director of International Affairs Division of “Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs”, participated in this Seminar, maintaining that ISP acts as an intermediary of information flows and therefore must be regulated by some legal liabilities.  However, in lack of legal basis, ISP in most circumstances is unable to delete or to properly dispose of any information that is claimed to be infringing when being requested to do so by the complainant, and then becomes involved in legal liabilities as a result.  The sale of pirated CDs and VCDs sold on auction sites is the most urgent problem to be solved by Japan government.  It is expected that Japan will accomplish the legislation with respect to ISP’s obligation to provide or make public the personal information of the transmitter in March 2007 the soonest.  Japan government has embarked on negotiation with auction website providers since early 2006 for the auction website providers to take the initiative in removing/taking down infringing products, which went effectively as Yahoo! Japan had removed 38 thousand of infringing products from auction sites in 2006. (2006.10)

/CCS