Azerbaijan enters world rankings on property rights
By Nigar Orujova
Property Rights Alliance has included Azerbaijan in its annual International Property Rights Index. Azerbaijan entered this year’s survey, covering 129 countries, on the 103th place.
Indices and ratings of the survey that include a number of indicators also assess the protection of intellectual property rights, Azerbaijan Copyright Agency reported.
The analysis of the alliance estimated sub-index of the intellectual property rights in Azerbaijan at 2.8 points with the following components – 4.2 points for protection of intellectual property rights and 1.5 points for the level of piracy.
The component for protection of intellectual property rights puts Azerbaijan at the 73rd place among 129 countries. According to the piracy rate component, Azerbaijan is on the 95th place among 105 countries, based on Business Software Alliance.
The piracy rate component is still high in Azerbaijan, according to the agency, which reduces the overall rate for the country to 2.8 points. In this context, the fight against piracy, primarily computer piracy, continues to be an urgent problem.
The overall level of 2.8 points means that Azerbaijan is the leader among the South Caucasus countries.
Meanwhile, the share of industry based on copyright and related rights in Azerbaijan’s GDP increased by five percent in 2003-2014, which corresponds to the world average.
This was stated in the report of the Azerbaijan Copyright Agency by results of 2015.
During this period, the share of creative industries in the country’s GDP has increased by 13 times. The volume of production of the creative industry in the country has increased from 220.5 million manats to 2,974 billion manats.
At the same time, the volume of the main production areas of intellectual rights increased by 11.6 times from 153.3 million manats to 1,786 billion manats.
The share of the intellectual industry in GDP grew from 3.1 to five percent.
Today, Azerbaijan is developing creative industry based on copyright. This, in turn, contributes to the emergence of new jobs and gives impetus to economic growth.
Measures taken to combat piracy in 2005-2014 decreased the level of counterfeit products in the publishing and audio-visual field from 61 to 30 percent and from 90 percent to 65 percent respectively. The amount of piracy in the software industry has decreased from 96 percent to 85 percent.
Azerbaijan has ranked 40th among 140 countries in intellectual property protection in the recent World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index. This confirms the country’s leading position in the CIS space in 2015, as in 2014.
Azerbaijan is now on route to increase sales of licensed software, which will inevitably lead to changes in consumer behavior. The Center for Intellectual Property Rights under the Azerbaijan's Copyright Agency regulates the issuance of control marks for the objects subject to copyright.
The fight against piracy in the software industry is expected to truly influence the business environment in the future. These measures are expected to be tightened in 2016.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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