‘This partnership could help ensure the reliability and integrity of the country’s site-blocking process. This will help our creative industry thrive freely and deal proactively with piracy.’
Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines director general, Atty. Rowel Barba. | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DG Barba/fb
With its recent partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Intellectual Property of the Philippines can now access WIPO's Alert Data Sharing Platform which offers a list of internationally known pirated websites and could enhance IPOPHL's site-blocking process.
Earlier, IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba and WIPO Director General Daren Tang sealed the Letter of Understanding, making the IPOPHL gain intelligence on all the websites that other WIPO member states reasonably suspect and enlist as intellectual property infringing.
"Having access to such a vast database, IPOPHL can strengthen its review of web addresses concerned in site-blocking requests. If a website of concern is found on the WIPO Data Sharing Platform list, IPOPHL has more persuasive evidence to request the National Telecommunications Commission to disable access to the site," Barba said.
Sites of concern
Aside from this, IPOPHL can also contribute to the inventory of so-called "sites of concern" by uploading its own "national list."
Housing is probably the biggest issue affecting people the world over.
Malacañang on Monday called for a more thorough investigation into the questioned flood control projects in Taguig…
The defense on Monday backed the move by senator-judges to exclude a prosecution witness who testified on the firearms…
IPOPHL is tasked to promptly update this list to remove any web address that is not justified to be of concern or has ceased to be so.
For her part, IPOPHL deputy director general Ann Claire Cabochan welcomed a new area of cooperation with WIPO and hopes to maximize the partnership for the benefit of the creative industry.
"This partnership could help ensure the reliability and integrity of the country's site-blocking process. This will help our creative industry thrive freely and deal proactively with piracy," she said.
Signed last September 2023 by the director general, the site-blocking mechanism will take effect on 21 November 2023. It is expected to effectively address rampant piracy in the Philippines which ranked third in East and Southeast Asia in 2020 in terms of consumers admitting to visiting piracy websites.
