Is there a parallel market situation for original phonograms and broadcasts in Sri Lanka?

 

Parallel market (gray market) is a market that develops in goods sold outside of their authorized channels of trade. In Sri Lankan context there are clear examples which exhibit such situation specially relevant to trading of films, Music albums etc. This is negatively affecting to manufacturer’s distribution arrangements and its ability to control the quality in the distribution channel.

Most of the time, when new films or new music albums are released to the market; duplication is unavoidable since the technologies are developed to do such activities at low cost. These duplicated copies are selling at maximum Rs 100 or lesser price with compared to the original product prices such as Rs 450 or higher than that. This is much beneficial for customers since it provide same benefits at low prices.

However the original creators or the manufacturers are facing huge problems since they could not able to harvesting their required benefits on their efforts. All most all time those manufacturers are used small number of selected outlets or distribution channels to deliver their products to the market. Therefore the product availability is low in the market at the introductory stage. The independent individual distributors or sellers who are existed out of the original distribution channel are simply taking the responsibility to spread the product all over the market and therefore original manufacturer is stagnating in the market.

 

This process leads to violate the rights of the original creator of such phonograms/broadcasts and this is considered as a violation of related rights in IPR law (Intellectual Property Rights). The 'related rights' were came in to the arena with the introduction of Rome convention in 1961 which administered by World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). However still the protection of such rights in Sri Lankan context or in other countries is not practical due to various reasons such as technological developments, less efforts of creators to protect such rights as well as weak points in law etc.