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Southeast Asia

Mar 19, 2005

Call centers urged to use licensed software

MANILA - The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) here has urged members of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) to use only licensed software in their computers.

IPO director general Adrian S Cristobal Jr reiterated this call to CCAP following its members' poor compliance with an agreement that contact centers will conduct software audits of all their computer systems as part of their corporate social responsibility and industry self-regulation.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by CCAP and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in April last year.

Under the agreement, CCAP members are to conduct software audits of all their computer systems. BSA will then issue a certificate of recognition valid for six months during which it will not initiate any enforcement action against the companies.

However, only two members of CCAP have so far complied with the terms of the MoU.

Cristobal said even foreign-owned firms have not complied with this agreement, which is supposed to be a model of intellectual property compliance.

"The call center industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country, along with the information technology industry," said Cristobal. "Call centers' strict compliance to IPR [intellectual property rights] is important if we want to expand and become the IT [information technology] hub of the region."

The success of this industry will benefit our people through more investments and jobs," the director general noted.

(Asia Pulse/PNA)

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