ICASL awareness on intellectual property for accountants

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (ICASL) spoke on Intellectual Property at a seminar "The accountant's contribution towards corporate integrity - mitigation of business risks during audits". The seminar targeted finance professionals and other conscience keepers in the business community.

Head of Audit of KPMG in Sri Lanka Suren Rajakarier, said that over the years, risk management and internal controls have steadily grown, and thus companies have had to step up their investment in this area. The auditor's primary statutory role is to express an opinion whether the financial statements are prepared, in all material respects in accordance with an identified accounting framework and give a 'true and fair' view. They cannot report on the future viability of a company nor do they issue a compliance report.

Whilst auditors are not responsible for preventing their clients from non-compliance with all laws and regulations according to the Sri Lanka Auditing Standards, auditors do have responsibilities at various stages of their audits (planning, performance and completion) to assess whether any non-compliance may result in a material impact on the financial statement. Thus they make their clients aware that management and those in charge of governing companies are responsible to prevent non-compliance with laws and regulations, such as the IPR Act No. 36 of 2003, the Companies Act, Accounting Standards, as well as other regulations, by implementing good risk management procedures and internal controls. In respect of Software Piracy, still rampant in our country as identified by many a corporate company who are at times fooled by their suppliers into buying i.e. pirated products without their knowledge, Shalini Ratwatte - Consultant - Business Software Alliance (BSA) recommendation was to conduct the checks and tools made available by the relevant software supplier so as to ascertain its authenticity, and conduct Software Asset Management reviews.

In many parts of the world, the Chartered Accountants also play a leading role in awareness creation and piracy reduction. Nonetheless, it always remains the responsibility of management to ensure that the entity's operations are conducted in accordance with the provisions of laws and regulations.

Among the many negative consequences of piracy, is the crippling of local industries because of competition with pirated products, lost tax revenues and jobs from the lack of a legitimate market, and when it comes to pirated software, decreased business productivity and security risks from using unsupported and unwarranted software. As illustrated by BSA, in broader economic terms, Vietnam has benefited substantially from a reduction in pirated software which resulted in 11 per cent of all new jobs created in the IT sector, 6 per cent of new 9 in country IT revenue and 11 per cent of increased Government tax revenue. (according to the Economic Impact study done by IDC in 2009).