Andra Wisnu, Denpasar – The recent legal battle over the ownership of traditional motifs has demonstrated the failure of Indonesian copyright law to protect local artisans and their future creative work, a discussion heard Tuesday.
The legal battle between PT Karya Tangan Indah (KTI) and Balinese artist Denny Aryasa is only one of many current copyright-related issues, with more to come if the government does not review its policy on intellectual copyright, Hira Jhamtani, a copyright scholar, said.
Hira said current intellectual copyright laws, which take their cue from the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights laws, threatened local artisans by allowing traditional motifs to be copyrighted by foreign corporations.
She said this permission allowed foreign corporations to claim a monopoly over Indonesia's traditional assets by threatening to sue locals who used these traditional designs.
"This can be quite serious as the recent case showed, and we really need to ask ourselves how can this law protect me instead of the foreign corporate people?" she said.
Balinese artisans have been in an uproar over the recent case between KTI and Denny Aryasa after the former sued the latter for stealing a copyrighted design. The plaintiff said Denny plagiarized KTI's Batu Kali design for his Crocodile motif.
The artisans were further angered when it was revealed in court that KTI had applied for the copyright to 1,200 Indonesian motifs in the United States, about 800 of which have been approved.
KTI has repeatedly denied it had tried to copyright traditional Indonesian motifs, claiming it was getting overseas copyrights of the company's original designs.
Hira said the issue was not limited to traditional motifs. A similar case in East Java in 2005 cost a corn farmer a year's worth of harvest after the district court ruled he had failed to certify his own breed of corn, sentencing him to six months in prison and barring him from using his seeds for a year.
The corn farmer, Tukirin, was earlier accused of breach of copyright by Charoen Pokphand-owned PT BISI Kediri, which claimed it had patented Tukirin's breed of corn before he used it, Hira said, adding the charges used in court concerned his failure to certify the seeds. Hira said Indonesia's current copyright law would continue to allow such cases to occur if it was not immediately reviewed.
"A corn farmer was not allowed to sow corn for a year. And for what? So that investors will feel that much safer when they come to Indonesia?" she said.
"Actually, that's what we really should be asking (governor) Pastika. Where is he taking our island? Toward more development or less poor people?"
Agung Dwi Astika, a legal expert, said the problem with Indonesia's intellectual copyright law, or HaKI, was that it was too vague.
He said the government should specify the kind of traditional motifs that are in the public domain, known in legal terms as folklore, and so cannot be copyrighted.
"It is the substance of the copyrighted item that gets argued about in court because the terms are often used incorrectly during the copyright process.
"But I think a lot of grievances can be resolved if the government can quickly come up with a catalogue of what motifs are usable," he said.