Facing a certification-or-sanctions vote from US anti-piracy watchdogs and hoping to become a hub for electronic commerce, Singapore says it's in the national interest to protect intellectual property rights over the Internet and today announced that it's looking at legislation and will accede to global protection efforts.
"Singapore is committed to a policy of giving proper protection to [intellectual property rights], including patents, trademarks, industrial design, and copyright," said Law Minister Shanmugam Jayakumar.
Jayakumar, who also holds the post of foreign minister, told a seminar that the government would also look into providing legal recourse for the infringement of such rights.
"Singapore will spare no efforts to ensure that we put in place a sound legal framework for addressing all relevant copyright issues in the digital world," he said.
He announced that Singapore was ready to accede to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Jayakumar said his ministry was also setting up an online system of patent processing that recognizes digital signatures. The first phase of the system for the Internet was targeted to start in the third quarter of 1999.
Singapore hopes to wire the entire island by 2000 through a high-capacity network to deliver multimedia services to every office, home, and school.
Today's announcement follows the anti-piracy show Singapore put on earlier this month when the government said it had gotten the nation's CD-makers to sign a pledge that they would not produce counterfeit goods.
