Harout, you are right. They need to put some effort in reducing the corruption levels in Armenia. It's is almost impossible to achieve anything involving a government employee without paying some form of a bribe. But that's beyond the focus of this article. There was a blog some time ago dispensing tips for bribery in the country. It hasn't been updated for some time, though. I guess it was a futile experiment. http://armeniabribes.blogspot.com/

Talking of technology and IPR... Armenia should be much more careful and active in protecting its online image on the Internet. I was looking up "Armenia" on Wikipedia and realized that Armenia is begining to 'shine' in the online world in a nondesirable manner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Armenia

Armen seems to be right when he says that this is not an area which concerns the government since they do not have any personal business interests in this sphere. Anybody who has visited the government's "Yerevan Computer Technology Centre" will think that the building has been hit by an earthquake, yet computer programmers are expected to work in those conditions to develop technology for the future! IP protection in Armenia is not as important to these developers as making sure that rain does not come in through the roof.

Very important article. If we see the problem from the angle of protetcing the IPR of a singer or Microsoft, people might consider it a 'side issue' of Armenian economy. Here is a fact that the artcile forgot to mention: Technology (IT above all) CANNOT develop in an environment without strong and properly applied IPR laws. It is like trying to develop tourism into Afghanistan’s Vaziristan region. No one will go there. The advantage of developing tech. is that usually there are no gangsters in there, it is a high added-value production and export, it is the future etc etc etc. And that’s why since independence Technology has quasi-disappeared from Armenia. We only here of two or three same companies all the time. In a developed country, in a single 2 KM long street of a tech zone you can have hundred tech companies. So, all of Armenia does not add up to a single street in a developed tech zone of EU, US or Asia. But I guess the reason Armenia lost all the tech it had is precisely because it is not a field gangsters get into. I remember, the first thing the head of state computer center had done after the independence was to extract the gold fromthe cricuits of the soviet computers!!!!!!