IN BRIEF: The Government of Egypt has announced that it is setting up a specialized digital forensic lab for Intellectual Property as part of its enforcement schemes of combating software piracy.
The
new lab, the first of its kind in the MENA region, is mainly designed to
resolve business software and internet-based piracy cases. It authentically
recovers data from digital devices and unearths new fraud techniques.
#Infosec During the concluded Intelligence strategies & crime prevention for law enforcers meeting held in #SouthAfrica - Among others, I emphasized on search warrant, Chain of custody, to document everything during #forensics investigation & Proper handling of #Digital evidences pic.twitter.com/TFUt2HvDA8— YUSUPH KILEO (@YUSUPHKILEO) March 9, 2018
The
cutting-edge techniques and latest technologies employed in the lab devise a
road-map for judges, prosecutors, and lawyers. The practiced procedures enable
them to distinguish the counterfeit products from the genuine and manage the
intellectual property and digital piracy issues at hand.
The Information Technology Industry Development Agency
–
developing the IT industry in Egypt, hosts the lab at its premises. The agency
is the executive IT arm of the Egyptian ICT ministry to enforce IPR related to
software products and databases.
“Over
the last couple of years, ITIDA’s IPR office has undertaken comprehensive
actions to increase IP enforcement with all the stakeholders like the economic
courts; i.e., judges and prosecutors, police officers, and copyright
owners," said Dr. Mohamed Hegazy, Egypt’s IPR Office Manager.
Aiming
at developing the necessary skills, the fully dedicated IPR office has
delivered extensive training and capacity-building programs in legal, technical
and practical aspects during 2017 to more than 900 police officers, 97
journalists from the National Broadcasting Authority, 125 employees from different
software companies, in addition to 473 judges and prosecutors in the economic
courts.
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Digital
evidence, by its very nature, is fragile and can be altered, damaged, or
destroyed by improper handling or examination - this may render it unusable or
lead to an inaccurate conclusion.
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“We
are committed to sustaining our success in combating IP infringement and
expanding IP rights. The launch of this lab enables us to achieve our targets”.
“Only in 2017, we have delivered technical expertise reports of 96 cases to the
economic courts, registered 203 computer software programs and issued 267
licenses for the first time.”, Hegazy added.
According
to the latest BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study in 2016, the Egyptian piracy
rate reached 61%, a ratio lower than most of competing countries and leading
global outsourcing locations including Morocco (65 percent), the Philippines
(67 percent) and Vietnam (78 percent).
The
Cabinet is preparing a data protection and privacy law draft. It has already
agreed on cyber-crime law and awaits the Parliament’s approval to be enacted,
according to Egypt’s state media.
With
the sustained momentum that Egypt is gaining in the area of tech innovation and
startups ecosystem maturity, the Egyptian government represented by the
Ministry of ICT has put its free and open software strategy into action in
2016.
The
newly adopted policy represents a paradigm shift in intellectual property rules
as it provides an alternate software-licensing model while developing a healthy
eco-system for software production and innovation.
