The permanent secretary in the ministry of Trade and Industry Emmanuel Hategeka has challenged artists to be creative and innovative in order to compete in the international market.
He made the remarks during celebrations to mark the World Intellectual Property Day at the Ministry’s headquarters in Kigali, yesterday. The theme of the celebration was “Designing the Future”. The event brought together stakeholders in Intellectual Property, to take stock of the progress made so far and discuss strategies for further measures to meet their goals.
Hategeka further appealed to the artistes to register their product designs and trademarks with the Rwanda Development Board to help safeguard their intellectual property rights, adding that statistics availed by RDB indicated low registration of copyrights and patent rights.
The Registrar General at RDB Louise Kanyonga said that the registration of copyrights, trademarks and industrial designs was free so as to encourage more traders, artisans, writers to register and gain from their innovations.
Recently, the government enacted the new Intellectual Property Law and Policy to protect artistic work form counterfeiting and piracy. The law highlights the industrial law that deals with trade marks, patent rights, industrial designs, utility models and geographical investments.
During the event, many of the participants highlighted problems they endure in carrying out their activities including counterfeiting and piracy, claiming that the industry had not protected and recognised their efforts thus leading to unsustainable development.
Rwandan artistes recently formed an artistes association known as the Rwanda Society of Authors (RSAU) to ensure protection of their intellectual property and enforce dignity. The association was formed to bring artistes together and protect them against copyright infringement and piracy.
The association has come up with regulations and anyone contravening the regulations would be punishable by law. According to the association, anyone infringing an author’s patent right will be charged a fine ranging from 50 million to 500 million or sentenced five years imprisonement. The association will also be in charge of selling all forms of arts produced by its members.
In addition, anyone wishing to buy a product would be required to buy them through the body. This means that radio and television stations would be banned from using any material produced by the members without prior consent of the association. Such institutions will have to have prior consent of the body before playing any songs on air.
However, some artistes raised fear that radio and television stations would not buy their songs, and this would make them resort to playing international music.
“If we sell our songs to these radios and television stations, they will not buy them but will play other songs from regional and international musicians since they get them freely,” a local singer, Mako Nikoshwa observed.
The president of the RSAU, Epa Binamungu reassured the artistes that everything concerning music and other forms of artisan works, either from the country or beyond would have to be supplied by the association at an agreed cost. He reiterated that no one else would obtain them without RSAU’s consent.
In a related development, Binamungu said that the day was important for artistes, composers and authors, to come together and reflect on what we should do to ensure that our properties and rights are protected so that we can benefit from them
“We earn a living out of our composition and creations, so if we don’t have strict enforcement of copyright laws, we will continue losing not only financial resources but also our rights to our properties,” he added.
Binamungu, however, said that the government had shown commitment to protect intellectual properties especially through the enactment of the new law as well the crackdown by the Rwanda National Police (RNP) on individuals pirating intellectual property.
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