The government has planned to merge department of copyright with the department of patent design and trademarks (DPDT) to enhance skill of the watchdog for smooth growth of knowledge based industry, sources said. Country's knowledge based industry is in dire situation as piracy is rampant in the book, audio and compact disk publication business. "Such merge will help strengthening the capacity of the department to launch drive against the practice of wholesale piracy of books and other audio video publications," a high official of the DPDT told FE Thursday. No publication house and audio-video entrepreneur in the country could gain much as some unruly and underworld publishers are earning huge money by coppying popular books and other publications. Earlier department of paten design and department of trademarks were merged in a single department for empowering the institution on the eve of world free trade era. The government has also planned to introduce a new law namely Utility Model Law (UML) to specify rights of country's small inventors. It is too difficult to maintain difference of small inventions by the existing patent design law, the official said. A move is also underway to introduce a fresh paten design law. The Law commission has drafted the new patent design law recently which is now at the Bangla Academy for translation, sources added. In addition, the government is going to introduce an information technology based database and documentation centre to provide client service at the DPDT. Currently the intellectual property rights of local products and inventions are rarely accepted by any international agency as the law is very backdated. The fresh law has been prepared considering existing rules of world trade organisation, sources added. However, after merging the two departments a initiative has been taken to introduce a directory registering names of all herbal plants and traditional plants and vegetables under DPDT. It has also initiated to register all names of herbal and traditional medicine to curb rampant use of spurious herbal medicine. It was also planned to enhance coordination among directorate of drug administration and Bangladesh standard and testing institution with the DPDT.
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