OPTICAL Media Board (OMB), in partnership with Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Davao, launched its first satellite office outside Metro Manila on Tuesday, July 11, at Davao City Investment Promotion Center (DCIPC).
The OMB is a national agency under the Office of the President responsible for regulating the production, use, and distribution of recording media in the Philippines.
Lawyer Anselmo Adriano, the Chair and CEO of OMB, said in an interview that the satellite office was built upon the requests of many business owners situated outside its main office in Manila.
"Despite our budgetary constraints, we have decided to build this inorder to reach far-flung areas and give them easy access for the licensing and legitimizing of optical and magnetic media used for business," Adriano said.
The satellite office, Adriano said, will only be limited to the licensing and permit applications pertaining to optical and magnetic media activities. The processing of these will still be done at its main office.
On the matter of enforcing its advocacy in protecting the intellectual property rights of business companies, Adriano said the OMB-Davao Satellite Office (OMB-DSO) will focus on creating public awareness than putting up a raiding team because the board only has 24 raiding members based in the main office.
"We still do not have a budget to create a raiding team in every satellite office that we have since we are utilizing our budget in establishing satellite offices in the country," he said.
This August, Adriano said OMB will also launch its second satellite office in Cebu City and on December in Baguio City. Around 50 percent of all unregistered optical media operations will be covered and regulated once all satellite offices will be completely established.
Councilor Al Ryan Alejandre, during the launching, assured OBM-DSO the support of the City Council in implementing the law protecting the intellectual property rights.
Alejandre also said that the council already talked with DTI-Davao regarding the livelihood training to be given to those who will get affected with the strengthened campaign against piracy in the city.