A better copyright office
A.B.M. Shamsud Doulah, Chairman, Bangladesh Intellectual Property Law Society, Dhaka
Copyright offices in the developed countries have been operating for a long time, establishing a tradition of protecting various types of intellectual properties and upholding the values of the respective nation. But in Bangladesh the situation is not satisfactory and it is due to the serious irregularities and lack of farsightedness in programmes, policies and implementations.Believe it or not we have a Copyright Office, fully managed and controlled by the government of Bangladesh: (A) without any office building of its own; (B) having no organised library and archives; (C) hardly having classifiers, indexers and cataloguers; (D) having no facility of using computer technology, modern audio visual and other allied disciplines; (E) above all it does not have any minimum acceptable tools of running a Copyright Office, say any bibliographic collections. Moreover, though surprising, it does not have any substantive appointed Registrar to run the office. We have been trying to impress the government for the last few years to integrate and organise the various Intellectual Property Offices of Bangladesh (e. g. The Trade Mark Registry and the Patent and Design Office) with good laws both in Bengali and in English keeping pace with the minimum standard fixed by various international intellectual property organisations (e.g. World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and other offices). We draw the kind attention of the authorities to look consider the ongoing status of the Copyright Office with priority so that the nation can get the real and effective benefits of such important national establishment.
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