L. Singapore
L1. The Singapore Copyright Act has criminal provisions similar to those in New Zealand, with a penalty of imprisonment for a term up to 5 years and a fine up to S$10,000 for each article or a maximum of S$100,000.
L2. There is provision for search warrants to enter premises to seize infringing copies and documents which are evidence of an offence.
L3. Copyright raids are executed by the Intellectual Property Rights Warrant Enforcement Unit which is a division of the Police. In recent months the Police have taken a more pro-active approach by organising raids with the assistance of the copyright owners against software and music counterfeiters.
L4. The Singapore Trade Marks Act provides that it is an offence for any one who imports, sells, or exposes or has in his possession for sale or for the purpose of trade or manufacture, any goods or things to which a counterfeit trade mark is applied, or to which a registered trade mark is falsely applied. The penalties are the same for copyright.
L5. The Copyright Act also empowers the Custom and Excise Department to prevent the entry of infringing goods at the border, provided written Notice of Objection is first supplied to the Department. As in New Zealand an action for infringement of copyright must be instituted within a specified time otherwise the counterfeit copies are returned to the importer.
L6. Singapore law also provides for civil action not unlike that available in New Zealand and typical also of common law countries.
L7. It is believed in Singapore that the current economic slump has exacerbated the availability of counterfeit product, particularly in view of the reduced buying power of consumers and the ability of current reproduction technology to render counterfeit copies of music, software and video CDs with the same quality as the original in terms of the contents.
L8. It is apparent in Singapore that the penalties are also largely ineffectual since the profits involved far outweigh any penal considerations. The low overheads and operating costs to pirate lead to high profit margins notwithstanding the cheap price of counterfeits. Sentences are usually determined by the number of offending articles the counterfeiter is caught with, but in between one raid and another he more than recoups the amount he is fined. News reports show that professional "fall guys" are also paid to spend time in jail, rendering measures such as jail terms a failure as far as deterrents are concerned.
L9. In 1994 the Singapore Copyright Act was amended so as to provide that parallel importing of genuine product could not be copyright infringement.
L10. Because of Singapore's position in world trade, it remains a conduit for counterfeit goods from such major counterfeiting countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, to reach New Zealand.
L11. It is apparent that Singapore currently remains a source of counterfeit goods and CDs in particular, or as well as a conduit through which such CDs can pass. It is likely that counterfeit CD software seized in New Zealand originated from Singapore.
L12. In April 1998, the Singapore government introduced a licensing scheme for the manufacture of CDs and video disks.
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