Geographical Indications (GIs) became the newest addition to Intellectual Property Rights when the Member states of the newly founded World Trade Organisation (WTO), including Indonesia, signed the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1994. Indonesia then enacted Law No. 14 of 1997 concerning Trademarks, which stipulated GI protection in Indonesia for the first time.
In 2016, the Government of Indonesia published the new Trademarks and Geographical Indications Law No. 20/2016 that superseded the previous trademark law. The GI name is paired with the trademark to reinforce the recognition of the existence of GIs as an intellectual property rights regime in the national legal system.
In the general provisions of TM Law and GIs 20/2016, GIs are a sign that indicates the place of origin of goods and/or products, which due to the geographical environment factors, including the nature, the human or the combination thereof gives specific reputation, quality, and certain characteristics of the produced goods and/or products.
Despite the economic benefit, raising awareness of the community on the importance of GI protection remains a challenge. There will be more opportunities to be tapped in the future as discussions with the EU are being conducted to facilitate GI registration and protection in the EU in the context of the on-going Indonesia-EU Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) negotiation.
Under the leadership of Dr Freddy Harris, S.H., LL.M., ACCS, the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP), the Ministry of Law and Human Rights has been conducting reforms to improve public service in intellectual property rights. The hard work paid off. DGIP received several awards and recognition, including the TOP 40 innovation of public service 2018 in The International Public Service Forum 2018 of the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reforms, Status of the corruption-free zone and clean bureaucracy zone for Directorate of Copyright and Related Rights, and representing Indonesia at the second ASEAN-RoK Ministerial Roundtable and Exhibition on Public Service Innovation in Busan, South Korea in November 2019, among others.
On Monday, August 23, 2021, evening, the Director-General, Mr Freddy Harris, kindly accepted to share his perspective with us on institutional reforms to promote and protect the geographical indications for the economic prosperity of the Indonesian community.
Q: What is the recent development of GI registration in Indonesia?
A: We still need to conduct a lot of communication campaigns to promote GI. Concern and understanding of the importance or the benefit of GI protection from the Regional Government needs to be improved. Therefore, we launched a "GI Year" campaign in 2018. In addition to the campaign, we evaluated why GI registration was still very low in our country. It turned out that registration requirements were very complicated. It was like writing a dissertation and it deterred many to register. Local governments also found it difficult to fulfil the requirements. Therefore, we changed the registration system to make the process easier. I asked Pak Fajar (Deputy Director for Foreign Cooperation) to simplify the GI registration and make it online.
I was perplexed by our complicated GI registration process. It turned out, it was ourselves who made it difficult. If we follow the European standard in the registration process, no one will register. We cannot compare GI implementation in Europe with our country. Europe has been practising GI for over 100 years, while we just started to build our GIs. We may all know some GI products from Europe that have been around for a long time, for example, Champagne from France, Parmesan cheese from Italy, and many more.
Q: So, how do you encourage the communities to register their GIs?
A: We have to change the pattern. First, we have to make the registration process easy. We need to encourage the community to feel happy and willing to register, then make the community proud of having the GIs registered. Praise the Lord; we now receive many applications, but many of them are still in the review process. To date, we issued 101 registered-GI certificates, which 9 of it are international GIs registered in Indonesia.
We started to promote GI intensively in 2019. We conducted roadshows with regional leaders. I've always emphasised how GI may promote local governments and boost the local economies. I've always illustrated this with concrete examples to provide a better picture of the economic benefits. By giving a clear illustration, people will quickly understand the importance of GI. For example, Toraja Coffee's selling price increased after being registered as a GI. The GI certificate provides consumers with a guarantee of the high quality and reputation of the product origin. In the end, it will create more demand and boost economic growth.
Indonesia is rich with its potential and diversity of natural resources that are notable for GI certification. We have Bajawa Avocado, Bali Amed Salt, and Cilembu Sweet Potato. Another example is Toba Ulos Fabric from Toba, North Sumatra that has a specific character and uniqueness. Can we make ulos fabric in Tanah Abang, Jakarta? Yes, we can. But we cannot refer to it as Toba Ulos fabric. With simple illustrations and communicative explanations, many local governments get more interested in registering their GI products because of the economic value-added. Praise the Lord; the community has started to have awareness and understanding of the GI concept.
Q: Since the community has started to have awareness, what would be the strategies to improve control and protection?
A: Intellectual Property has three strategic pillars: protection by registration, commercialisation, and law enforcement. But currently, we are still more focused on registration and commercialisation. Without registration, there is nothing to protect. So registration is paramount. Again, to encourage the GI registration, we simplify the process. Farmers, artisans, rural communities should be able to register easily. After that, we will assign the GI team to review the documents.
By registering the GI, the community should gain economic benefit and added value to their products. Then, we conduct control and law enforcement.
Q: I saw from the news that DGIP held PPNS (civil servant investigator) training. Is it one of the strategies to strengthen protection and enforcement?
A: Yes, that's right. In foreign countries, violations of intellectual property rights (IPR) include private claims, private infringements, and business infringements. In Indonesia, we also add criminal infringements.
Speaking of law enforcement, we need to ensure the readiness of our investigators. DGIP has civil servant investigators (PPNS), but not sufficient to resolve all existing disputes. So, we trained many candidates to be Civil Servant Investigators (PPNS) for two months last July to improve their capacity to handle cases of IPR violations throughout Indonesia.
Next year we want to try our law enforcement capacity and preparedness. The DGIP aims to remove Indonesia's status off the 'Priority Watch List' by improving IPR enforcement. But it doesn't mean that we don't implement any IPR enforcement today. The Director of Investigation and Dispute Settlement and his team are busy handling cases.
Q: Based on case studies abroad, the GI communities/associations can conduct internal control over their GI products. In Indonesia, who will provide capacity building for the community/association?
A: Here, we're talking about the industry. In Indonesia, we have the Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Industry. We have to sit together to discuss GI control.
But we are now under-staff. Pak Idris, the Head of GI Monitoring and Supervision, is a single fighter without staff. It must be tough to function fully. At the moment, we're trying to sort this out. We may need to recruit non-civil servants or outsourcing.
Q: Inspired by your GI campaign, I am now a proud GI customer. I bought GI-registered Arabica Gayo Coffee a couple of weeks ago, but I noticed that they didn't use the proper GI label. What would be the strategies to encourage and improve compliance in using GI labels correctly?
A: Next year, in line with the readiness of the law enforcement team, we will not only control branding but also control quality assurance. Like I said before, this year, we will focus on registration first. But with support from ARISE+ Indonesia, we prepared the "Indonesian GI Branding Guidelines" document both in English and Indonesian languages. The document is created to supplement MoLHR Regulation No. 29 of the Year 2013 Concerning the Indonesian GI Logo and Code of Origins of Indonesian GI products.
We thank ARISE+ Indonesia for the support because we cannot work alone or work instantaneously. The public has just started to have an awareness of trademarks, let alone on GI. But there's hope and opportunity.
Q: Despite the challenges, DGIP has done many innovations, communication campaigns, even receiving notable recognitions. What is DGIP's vision under your leadership?
A: We have the vision to be "The Best 10 IP Office in the World". Since we have Ibu Irma looking at our Public Affairs, we started to move forward with this vision. Why? Because we want to be equal with other countries. Also, we want to deliver maximum public services, not just minimum as required. We achieve this by improving our personnel, restructuring the organisation of DGIP, utilising IT systems to build a world-class data centre and developing IP Academy.
Thanks to the hard work of my colleagues in DGIP, we contributed to increasing non-tax state revenues by 130 per cent, above the target, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic through IP application services. The trademarks and patent applications increased. The number of trademarks used to be 40 per cent local and 60 per cent foreign, but now it's the other way around. So is the patent increased by 20 per cent. It means that our community has started to have an awareness of the importance of IPR.
I want to thank all of my colleagues in DGIP, both in the substantive departments, such as trademarks, patents, and others and in supportive departments, such as the secretariat, directorate of cooperation, directorate of IT, and directorate of investigation.