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Published on April 3, 2008

Jade said he was afraid that the principle of all IPRs - copyright, patent and trademark - would be misused if there is no neutral organisation to control it.

I called Jade after interviewing Yanyong Akrajindanon, senior executive vice president of Thai Copyrights Coalition (TCC), a company assigned by RS International Broadcasting and Sport Management (RSBS) to collect copyright fees for viewing the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship. RSBS is its sole authorised broadcaster in Thailand.

Both TCC and RSBS are daughter companies of RS Public Company, one of Thailand's biggest entertainment companies and come to the public with several corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. RSBS last week said it would collect a copyright fee from businesses that intend to use the TV football broadcasts to attract their customers.

I was surprised by the RSBS announcement because the medium the company is going to broadcast its copyrighted football programmes is free TV: Channel 7 and Modern 9 TV. No one should pay a fee for watching a programme broadcast on free TV.

"We have paid a huge sum of money to bring the programme to the Thai public via free TV and someone is going to exploit the broadcasting for their own commercial purpose. We have to protect our rights," Yanyong said.

RSBS planned to charge Bt2,000 per screen that is smaller than 50 inches, and Bt5,000 for larger screens for the whole tournament, which will be played from June 9 to 27. Those who show the games at their businesses without paying the fee will be legally charged as copyright infringers. RSBS, Yanyong said, expected to collect Bt30 million from the copyright fee.

Yanyong said Bt30 million is not much in term of business.

That being the case, I asked him why the company does not allow the public to watch the game free as part of its CSR programme. His answer was "we are not saints, but business operators". 

I am not going to talk about legal aspects of the issue and whether it is legal to collect copyright fees for programmes broadcast on free TV. That is for the IPR experts. My concern is the way we implement IPR. I totally agree with Jade that we have come so far from the principle of the IPR which was established in western countries a long time before its arrival in Thailand.

"The basic principle of copyright is to encourage people to create new things by awarding them exclusive rights to protect their creation. I don't think the use of copyright in this case relates to any creation," Jade said.

Though supporting and promoting the IPR laws, Jade  wished to see the laws wisely used for the sake of the public, not business purposes.

IPR has become a perfect tool for corporate intellectual property rights holders to get rid of small business operators. I am afraid the situation will get worse if we allow IPR laws to be used without control.

Jade  propose a way out - a neutral organisation to control the use of IPR. Will the Department of Intellectual Property support the idea or does it have another way to ensure that IPR laws are not misused?

Pennapa Hongthong

the nation