Irked Quark condemns lack of IPR awareness

After having performed efforts to register a software theft case, publishing software maker Quark, is annoyed over the non-cooperation received from local police authorities. It started about two months back when Mohali-based Quark´s office realized that some critical portion of its yet-to-be released software was being copied by one of its employees. He was involved in high-end R&D work being done at the facility. 

Reacting swiftly, the company conducted an internal probe to arrive at the conclusion that some portions of the software was indeed being stolen and the employee in question was immediately asked to leave the company.

"We wanted to register a case against that employee and went to Ropar police station. But they had no idea about what we were talking about, so they didn´t register an FIR. Instead, they were asking us about the evidence," informed a highly placed source from Quark on conditions of anonymity. 

He added that this is bad for software companies in India as most of them perform development work in the software area. Lack of awareness about Intellectual property Rights (IPR) related issues is going to create a bad name for the country.

Considering that Quark is one of the biggest software players in the state and realizing the criticality of this situation, Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh has openly said that he would intervene in the matter as the state police had failed to understand the issue. 

Sources in Quark also informed that its CEO, Fred Ebrahami and Executive Director of Quark India, Parminder Sehgal met high-level Punjab police officials to complain about how the Ropar police has been stonewalling the company´s efforts to register an FIR for the same. All this has left a bad mark on Quark´s high level management and the company is now likely to take this matter further with national associations like NASSCOM in the near future. "We would like the country to notice that this type of incident did occur and will also work with NASSCOM and other industry bodies to make sure that other companies do not face similar problems in dealing with IPR protection," the source informed.

Quark is also involved in the construction of a 48-acre real estate project near Chandigarh. Global majors like Dell have already confirmed their plans to occupy space in the near future.

Talking about IPR-related cases that are being reported in the country, advocate with Supreme Court of India and a Cyberlaw consultant, Pavan Duggal said that there is a lot of under reporting being done with crimes related to IPR. This is the reason police authorities do not know much about this activity. "Out of 500 instances of cyber crime, only 50 get reported. Out of this, only one gets registered by the police, this was revealed by a survey of Indian companies that we did last year," Duggal added. 

CYBERMEDIA NEWS 



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