In continuous to the efforts that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to minimize violations against intellectual property rights, the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, in accordance to its competencies, organized an online inspection campaign on websites and platforms that violates intellectual property laws including sites broadcast from outside the Kingdom. SAIP recently monitored, examined, and analyzed 231 websites that violates Intellectual property law to prevent it from being browsed from the Kingdom. Those detected sites included a group of violations, which are downloading and watching movies and series, directly broadcasting sites of encrypted sports channels, downloading books in PDF format sites, downloading and listening to music sites and all been done without obtaining a prior license or authorization from the right holder. SAIP has also detected websites that are selling subscriptions for encrypted TV channels through softwares or illicit streaming devices (ISDs) to break barriers for the purpose of displaying materials in illegal ways. SAIP confirmed that these practices violates the copyright protection law and entail financial penalties and fines that may reach up to 250,000 Saudi riyals. In addition to the applied fines, the violation may cause the closure of the site, or the cancellation of the commercial license, and in some cases it can cause to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or defamation at the account of the infringer and removing the infringement. Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property stresses that it will not tolerate the accountability of all those who violate the laws and regulations, nor will it condone these violations, and calls upon citizens and residents to support those efforts to respect intellectual property rights through communicating via its official channels: direct customer service number (920021421), via E-mail [email protected] or through social media official account @SAIPKSA and contribute to reporting directly to everyone who does work that violates the laws and protection of intellectual.
