IPOPHL to adopt a new case tracking system for piracy cases

MANILA  -The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) on Friday said it will adopt a new case tracking system as early as December this year, allowing the use of a central platform that will streamline the handling and monitoring of counterfeiting and piracy cases in the country.

Director General Rowel Barba said the IP Enforcement Tracking System developed by software solutions company Multisys Technologies Corp will be delivered by December for use by members of the interagency body National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR) which it is a part of.

“Everything will be on one platform. So, for us, instead of waiting for reports (from other government agencies) on how many cases, how many convictions, how many seizures, everything can be found within the system,” Barba said during a press conference.

The 15-member NCIPR is chaired by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the IPOPHL’s parent agency, with members including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Bureau of Customs (BOC), the Food and Drug Authority (FDA), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Philippine National Police and the Optical Media Board (OMB).

Other members are the National Book Development Board (NBDB), Office of the Special Envoy on Transnational Crime, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and the Bureau of Immigration (BI).

READ: Bongbong Marcos to IPOPHL: Craft programs to bolster PH’s IP regime

In the next few months, Barba said they will conduct training sessions for users of the IP Enforcement Tracking System, particularly on the uploading and encoding of data  into the system.

“With this IP Enforcement Tracking System, the NCIPR now has a reliable and organized source of database which each member can ingest and analyze to deliver what is expected from each of us,” Barba also said.

He further said that this new tool will help identify modus patterns, potential leads and emerging hot spots for intellectual property (IP) infringement activities and would help in profiling IP rights violators.

The IPOPHL said in particular that it will provide a system for the proper collection, storage and management of information, which includes records on complaints received, search warrants applied for and served, seizures, alert orders, and cases prosecuted by and those still pending before the Department of Justice (DOJ).

It will also provide improved tracking of the investigative progress and deadlines of each case. Further, it will also expedite coordination by providing alerts on the necessary next steps on a case and assigning or reminding users through notifications.

READ: Gov’t seized P23B worth of pirated goods as of Sept

At least P23.03 billion worth of pirated goods were seized by authorities from January to September this year, leading to a more than two-fold increase in the value of these contrabands confiscated yearly in the Philippines. This was the collective haul of the NBI, the PNP, the BOC, and the FDA during the nine-month period, which surpassed the value of last year’s haul of P9.49 billion.