Thursday, 17 October 2013

CRAFTERS’ AWARENESS OF INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS TO BE ENHANCED



Home industry crafters and UKM Small Business must be made aware of the importance of Intellectual Right [HaKI]. Application for patenting was necessary to prevent handicraft work from being claimed by another country. If all products were already certified, crafters would be rest assured that their products would be marketable in the world. In case of Batik, for example there was no need to fear it would be exploited by other countries since it was already patended as Indonesian product.

Crafters must also constantly strive to step up their competence. Creativity was needed by every crafters whereby to make high quality product. To command the market, a product must be strong in terms of design, production, packaging and selling. “The key solution is in the awareness of crafters themselves especially about intellectual right. I believe their awareness must be stepped up” Okke Hatta Rajasa, Chairman of the Board of National Handicraft [Dekranas] stated in Jakarta on Thursday [19/9].

Considering the importance of intellectual Right [Haki] Okke also pled to all crafters in Indonesia to patent their creations based on design and technology to protect them from hi-jacking. He said that crafters must intensely patent the deign and pattern of their work pieces. Not less important was the underlying technology of production.

Okke stated that patenting would be facilitates by the National Board of Handicraft and the Ministry of Industry to be forwarded to the Ministry of law and Human Right. Crafters must understand the importance of Haki for handicraft. In the future, he said Dekranas would scheme up a module to all crafters in Indonesia on how to manage Haki and patenting of handicraft.

Registration of work pieces was needed as evident of intellectual right. Haki was also important for protecting a creators’ work pieces from hijacking. As known, the three components of Haki were among others trademark, patent, industrial design.

He also saw that domestic handicraft and furniture products were still having problems, among others patented products. Unfortunately furniture carpenters had low awareness about patenting their products. Many people still believe that law enforcement and protection of intellectual rights in Indonesia was still law. Crafters were reluctant to patent their products, excusing themselves for not being able to afford to pay for it.

They said that exposure of handicraft products and furniture was a dilemma. If they were displayed in Expo, imitation would mushroom. If not displayed, they would not sell. Under such circumstances, creation of local crafters would be robbed by other countries. Crab chairs and bar tables for example was now copied and patented in China and France. He admitted that claim of patent by foreign companies had often occurred.

It was reported that the case was solved by way of down tracking. Meaning authentic documents denoting products made by Indonesian furniture producers were tracked down. For that matter it was important to pay serious attention to genuine Indonesian made products. Product innovation was absolutely important, with the support of natural raw materials which was abundant like rattan and teakwood. “Low awareness of intellectual rights, he said, made Indonesian handicraft and other products of the creative industry easily hi-jacked” Okke said. 

Business News - September 25, 2013

1 comment:

handicraftsinindia said...

Well, thanks for sharing such an informative and useful post. There are several artisans having expertise in crafting beautiful handicrafts in India, and those all are working regularly for crafting beautiful crafted items, allowing people from every corner of the worlds to get their home and workplace decorated. A very few of them are about these rights and those need to know these rights for the betterment of their work. So, your post is very much useful for those all.