Parliament on Tuesday passed a law aimed at protecting the patent rights of the country’s century-old indigenous products. The Geographical Indicative Products (Registration and Protection) Act 2013 would protect the country’s claims to commodities such as Hilsa fish, Jamdani Saree, Nakshi Kantha, Pineapples, Fazli Mango, Aromatic Rice Chinigura, Chamcham of Tangail and Kanchagolla of Natore.
The minister for industries, Dilip Barua, placed the bill in the parliament in line with the agreement reached between Bangladesh and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on January 1, 1995.
According to the act, Geographical Indication is a sign which defines the source and contains the goodwill of a product that originated in a particular area, like Hilsha from Padma, Chamcham from Tangail and Kanchagolla from Natore.
Barua in a statement tagged with the bill said the objective of introducing the act was to protect the interest of the producers by using a particular sign through registering.
As per the bill, a separate unit would be formed under the Department of Patent, Design and Trademark to operate on works related to geographical indicative products.
The unit would conserve a detailed list of geographical indicative products from across the country as a primary database of the local products.
The validity of a particular registered geographical indication product would remain for five years. The producer would have to apply for re-registering after the validity expires.
Any person or organisation would be punished with three years of imprisonment and Tk 200,000 fine for producing, transporting, storing and selling of a particular geographical indication product by providing false and fabricated information.
Similar punishment would be awarded for marketing of a particular registered product which had expired its validity, and for breaching the conditions of the registration as a geographically indicative product.
-With New Age input
