Bahrain IT Legal Environment
Overview: With the rise of IT industry, the government of Bahrain has specifically implemented an extensive guideline of rules and regulations concerning intellectual property, software copyright, privacy & Censorship. The laws centrally concern IT software and not much for Internet Domain and website regulation.
Intellectual Property & Software copyright
Bahrain government has established
and enforced many roles in order to protect the use of copy write. News papers
since the entire last year have been reporting incidences where plagiarized
software was found in computer systems for many companies. The action that
was taken is stopping the business from continuing its operations and taking
away its license. Formatting the computers from the software and taking them
away from the business organization building which was the action taken when
they find that the organization did not format their computers from the illegal
use of such software. Moreover, the business owner is held responsible in
the suit case, after the first warning, at the court of law.
Indeed the enforcement of the law is succeeding in eliminating the use of
the illegal software, but unfortunately business does get affected by the
intellectual property law and registered trademark.
Obviously the government of Bahrain seems to be heading in the right direction
by enabling intellectual property rights and should be credited, but such
law was supposed to be enforced long time ago. Still the government was at
luck of resources since the first organization movement was found by a group
of software professionals, and there was no pressure on the government to
enforce such laws. The piracy rates in Bahrain were 90% at 1996 and it dropped
to 77% by year 2001 (4).
Certainly the intellectual property is well handled at the government of Bahrain,
as the IT age is at its beginning. Finally, Bahrain government should hold
higher penalties for those businesses using plagiarized software inside their
office buildings.
The Bahrain law states the following
“The introduction of the limited liability sole proprietorship, which allows
a single investor to own a Limited Liability company; The introduction of
simplified procedures that allow companies to change their legal form; The
introduction of articles relating to the establishment and regulation of holding
companies; The ability to establish joint stock companies through a Ministerial
resolution rather than an Royal Order, as previously required; The increase
of capital requirements for Limited Liability and Joint Stock companies.”
(1)
The Intellectual Property laws go all the way to covering trademarks, patents,
designs and copyrights. Patent and Design Regulations were introduced in 1955
and amended in 1977, with new legislation expected to be introduced by 2002.
Modifications were made to both the Trademark Law and the Copyright Law in
1993. Bahrain has been a member of both the Paris Convention and the Berne
Convention since 1996.”
Domain Names
The Commercial Copyright law that has been established by the Government of
Bahrain and is always strictly enforced. As far as the Domain names are concerned,
there is no law regarding the implementation of domain names and to ensure
that the domain names are under legal coverage because Bahrain does not own
any of the large domain names and actually has to buy them from the domain
name sellers in the United States.
Privacy & Censorship
In terms of privacy, the country right now does not have a system that would
censor information flowing on the Internet but the government is considering
implementing some sort of filtering to block website site material that might
be inappropriate to minors. Therefore, the routers installed for data processes
do not have a filtering system installed yet.
The Kingdom of Bahrain government realized the need that in today’s competitive and challenging environment, there is a great need for the full exploitation of information technology and how it can serve the various sectors of the economy. The story started by the Bahrain Information Technology Society, formerly known as the Bahrain Computer Society and was founded in March 1981. This organization society had a focus on objectives, the main one being the essential promotion of the computer profession in Bahrain and improving the awareness of the general public to events and development in Information Technology. The Society achieves its objectives by providing a forum for information interchange on current and future trends in computer development and technology. The information is communicated through a process of regular meetings, seminars, lectures, and by the publication of news-letters and periodicals(2).
The law that primarily dictates the entire governing of the anti piracy aspect
in the country was founded as the base line of IT in 1996. As it stated “By
Amiri Decree Law No. 30/1996, Bahrain is party to the Berne Convention. Thus
works copyrighted in another country that is signatory to the Berne convention
are entitled to all the protections afforded by the Bahrain Copyright Law,
Decree Law No 10 of 1993 (enacted 9th June 1993). It is illegal to make or
distribute copies of copyrighted materials without authorization. No other
copies may be made without specific authorization from the copyright owner.
Each computer within your organization must have its own set of valid licenses
for use of each software package.” (2)
What the law states about Copyright Regulation is the prohibition of any copying
of software without prior permission of the software development vendor. In
the instance where caught with pirated software, you or your Company may be
prosecuted under the provisions of the said Law. The penalties under the Law
initiate from a minimal jail time for a period of one year, along with a fine
of BD 1,000 (US $ 2645) and depending on the intensity of the violation could
go up as well. In addition the pirated software may be confiscated and destroyed.
Moreover, the government policies
towards piracy are enforced directly from the Ministry of Information that
was established in the early 70’s. The primary roles and policies made by
the Ministry regarding IT are to prevent the miss use or to create fraud by
businesses lunching their e-commerce web sites over the internet and even
emphasizes about copied software. The ministry enforces the law by visiting
shops and business’s in order to explain copy right laws. This task force
took place a year ago to explain and enforce the law. Between times the daily
news paper reports illegal distributors are found red handed and take responsibility
for such actions. (3)
(2)http://www.bahrainedb.com/whybahrain/legal.stm
(3) http://www.bsa.org/middleeast/antipiracy/bahrain/law.phtml