This was decided at a high-level meeting held at the Ministry of Commerce on January 26.
The meeting was held to review the measure required to be taken for improvement in the enforcement of intellectual property rights in Pakistan with Secretary Commerce, Kemal Afsar, in the chair.
It was also attended by the senior officials of Ministry of Commerce, Interior and Central Board of Revenue (CBR).
Being a signatory to WTO and its TRIPs agreement, Pakistan is required to provide a minimum level of protection to the intellectual property rights.
Pakistan is facing pressure from other countries that it should improve environment for protection of IPRs to ensure protection to intellectual property rights.
The meeting was told that Pakistan has mended laws related to intellectual property tights to bring them in conformity with the WTO Agreements. However, in the area of enforcement the situation is not entirely satisfactory and the pirated CDs, video and computer software are not only affecting our local markets but also being smuggled to some other countries and if the situation does not improve, it may create serious implications for Pakistan.
The meeting decided that ministry of Interior and CBR would jointly initiate action for this purpose for which appropriate instructions were being passed on to the provincial governments and field formations to take strict actin.
It was also decided that necessary legal action shall be taken against commercial establishments involved in sales of such illegal products.
The CBR shall depute special personnel at various exit points such as airports, seaports etc in order to strictly prevent the smuggling of pirated CDs by seizing them and initiating legal proceeding against the offenders.