Illustration of Intellectual Property Rights symbols representing copyright, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, highlighting the importance of IPR in a digital world.INTRODUCTION
As we talk about property there are generally two types of property tangible and intangible. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are the rights associated with intangible property owned by individuals or organizations, safeguarding them from unauthorized use. The intellectual Property (IP) encompasses the creations of human intellect, including artistic, literary, technical, and scientific works. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) provide legal protection to inventors and creators, ensuring they can secure and profit from their creations or products. These rights empower the owner or their assignees, licences, predecessors to exclusively utilize their innovation or product for a designated period.
IPR plays a crucial role in encourage creativity, innovation, and economic development by granting creators exclusive rights to their inventions, designs, and artistic works. This framework allows individuals and organizations to reap the rewards of their intellectual contributions, encouraging further advancements in society’s knowledge and cultural richness.
WHAT IS IPR?
The term intellectual property right (IPR) refers to the collection of rights granted by law to a creator, author, or owner of intellectual property. Intellectual property rights provide legal protections designed to safeguard an individual’s creative efforts, which can include artistic works, literature, inventions, or symbols and designs used in commerce. These rights allow creators to enjoy and control their work without interference, giving them the power to prevent unauthorized use. While these protections are sometimes called “exclusivity rights” they are limited in scope, with protection extending in a specific country, for specific timeframes (Ex: 20 years for patents, 15 years for design 10 years for trademark renewable indefinitely).
WHAT IS WIPO?
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a United Nations agency dedicated to assisting creators and innovators in safeguarding and promoting their intellectual property (IP). Its primary aim is to establish a balanced international IP system that fosters innovation and creativity. WIPO was established in 1967 in Stockholm to protect intellectual property rights globally and became a UN agency in 1974. Link to WIPO’s website: https://www.wipo.int/portal/en/index.html
WHY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SHOULD BE LEGALLY PROTECTED?
There are several important reasons for acquiring protection for one’s intellectual property, including:
- IP rights allow creators, such as artists, inventors, and designers, to get financial benefit when others use their work.
- Encouraging innovation and creative activities that contribute to the social, economic, scientific, and cultural development of society by rewarding creators with financial benefits from their work.
- Preventing others from exploiting someone else’s innovative work without permission.
- Promoting creativity and supporting the dissemination of creative works.
- Recognizing the efforts of creators.
- Protecting the intellectual property rights of creators against unauthorized use and infringement.
TYPES OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT
COPYRIGHT –
Copyright refers to the legal rights over original works of authorship (which include art, literature, poetry, website, computer software, lyrics, graphic designs, novels, films etc.) provided to creators or authors for artistic works. Copyright grants authors exclusive right to use, adapt, perform, licence, assign and prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of the work. Copyright protection begins as soon as an original work is created and expressed in a tangible form and is not reliant on registration.
Ex–Movies: A movie studio protecting the screenplay and visuals of a film, Songs: Music label protecting a song recording by a musician, Novel: A publishing house protecting the text of a novel by author.
Copyright safeguards two kinds of rights for authors:
- Economic rights: These rights enable authors to earn money from their creations by managing how their work is utilized. For instance, authors have the power to permit or deny the reproduction, translation, or other applications of their work.
- Moral rights: These rights safeguard the personal interests of the author, including the ability to object to changes made to their work and the right to be acknowledged as its creator.
Note:-In India, the term of copyright protection generally extends throughout the lifetime of the author and then 60 years after his death except for the case of cinematograph films, photographs, sound recordings, anonymous and pseudonymous publications, posthumous publications, works of government and works of international organisations, the 60-year period is counted from the date of publication.
TRADEMARKS –
A trademark is a distinctive symbol that sets apart the products of one business from those of its competitors. A trademark may be a word, logo, symbol, design, mascot, numeral, or even three-dimensional elements like shapes and packaging. According to Section 2(zb) of the Trademarks Act, 1999, a trademark is defined as a mark that can begraphically represented and is capable of distinguishing one person’s goods or services from another’s. This can include aspects like the shape of the products, their packaging, or a combination of colours. Thus, the distinctiveness of a trademark is its most important characteristic.
When trademarks are linked to services such as tourism, banking, and similar fields, they are known as Service Mark.
The owner of a registered trademark enjoys exclusive rights to its use. Trademarks are divided into 45 classes, with 34 designated for goods and 11 for services.
Ex-Nike: A famous trademark, McDonald’s the Golden Arches and the term “Big Mac”.
PATENTS –
A patent is a legal right granted exclusively for an invention or innovation, which can be a product or process that offers a novel way to accomplish a task or provides a unique technical solution to a problem. In simpler terms, it gives exclusive rights to the person who created it for:
- a new and useful article, or
- an improvement of an existing article, or
- new process for making an article.
Patents are the exclusive right granted by government to inventor for their inventions that have industrial and commercial value. This right allows the patent holder to manufacture the new article or use the invented process for a limited time (typically 20 years from the application filing date) in exchange for revealing the details of the invention. A patent owner has the option to sell their patent or license it to others for use.
Ex-Steve Jobs’ iPhone Design Patent, Tesla’s Electric Power Transmission Patent.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN –
An industrial design refers to the ornamental or visual characteristics of a product. This can include three-dimensional features, like the shape of the item, or two-dimensional aspects, such as lines, patterns, or colours. Industrial design is primarily about aesthetics; it does not serve a functional purpose and has no practical utility. To safeguard the creative originality of an industrial design, legal protection is essential to prevent unauthorized copying. The owner of a registered industrial design has the right to stop others from manufacturing, selling, or importing products that feature a design that is a copy of or closely resembles the protected design.
Ex-The Coca-Cola ‘Contour’ Bottle design, The Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ design.
TRADE SECRET –
Trade secrets represent a type of intellectual property that safeguards confidential information, which can be sold or licensed. This encompasses any private business details, including designs, plans, drawings, business strategies, or research and development data. For information to qualify as a trade secret, it must hold commercial value (meaning it is beneficial in trade or business), be known only to a select group of individuals, and be protected by reasonable measures implemented by its rightful owner to ensure its confidentiality.
There no law granting protection to trade secrets. A trade secret ought to be protected by its owner through documents like non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality classes etc. A trade secret loses its protection as soon as it comes into public knowledge.
Ex-Coca-Cola’s recipe, KFC’s secret blend herbs.
GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATION –
Geographical Indications (GI) are the signs used on products to indicate products have a specific geographical origin and any associated qualities or reputation. It is usually conferred to natural or agricultural or handmade goods originating from a particular region. As a type of intellectual property rights (IPR), geographical indications associate products with a defined zone of production within a nation, in which the quality, reputation or certain characteristics of that good are essentially tied to that region. As time passes, the bond between the goods produced and their source region makes the local connection more prominent.
Ex – Basmati rice and Darjeeling tea are the example of G.I
SEMICONDUCTOR INTEGRATED CIRCUITS LAYOUT DESIGN –
Integrated circuits, also known as chips or microchips, are electronic circuits in which a number of components, such as a transistor, diodes, and resistors are all interconnected and positioned upon a single thin layer of a semiconductor material, most frequently silicon.
The integrated circuits are an indispensable element of advanced technology as they are a constituent part for many, if not all electronic appliances. These appliances comprise of simple devices such as wristwatches, televisions, washing machines and vehicles through to more complicated systems such as computers, cell phones and other digital devices. Innovative lay out designs for integrated circuits have a great significance and are absolutely required in the manufacture of smaller and more efficient digital devices.
Ex– APPLE M2 chip, NVIDA graphic card
CONCLUSION
IPRs are essential for fostering creativity, innovation, and economic growth. They provide legal protection to creators and inventors so that they can enjoy their efforts while preventing unauthorized use of their works. The diverse categories of IPRs include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial designs, trade secrets, geographical indications, and semiconductor layout designs, which ensure a wide range of intellectual creations from artistic works and innovative technologies to unique designs and confidential business information.
By encouraging innovation and right of creators IPR gives impetus to scientific, technological and cultural progress in societies and provides a fair and proper framework for competition and lets individuals and business thrive within this knowledge-based economy. The world organization like WIPO plays an integral role in promoting global cooperation to achieve balanced IP system, a strong IPR regime Rewards innovation but propels economic development and enriches cultural and technological landscapes.
Author – Rituraj khare, Student BBA LLB 5th year
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