Taipei – Distributors of Japanese porn films are to send a delegation to Taiwan next week to seek better protection of their oeuvre’s copyright against pirates, their lawyer said Wednesday.

Japan’s top eight porn companies are making the visit in response to an increase in the pirating of their films in Taiwan, attorney Alex Chen told the German Press Agency dpa.

Increasing numbers of pirated copies of Japanese porn films are sold on the black market and aired on cable television channels in Taiwan, he said, causing huge losses in revenue for film makers and distributors.

Taiwan police do crack down on peddlers of pirated pornography, but they only punish the sellers for distributing obscene material, not for violating intellectual property rights, Chen said.

The representatives of the Japanese companies are to call for more effective protection of their intellectual property.

“They are seeking a new interpretation of the constitution, so that Taiwan can treat porn films as a commercial commodity and protect their copyright under Taipei’s’ obligation to the World Trade Organization,” Chen said.

“The current interpretation of the constitution says that porn films are obscene material, whereas only cultural or scientific material can be protected as intellectual property,” he noted.

“The constitution should have a more enlightened interpretation of porn film,” he said.

Japanese companies release some 20,000 porn films each year, many of which are then pirated and sold on black markets across Asia.