INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PART-1

The concept of intellectual property (IP) will be understood better if we understand what is meant by the term property. To a lay person property means some material object belonging to a particular person. The concept of ownership is critical to the concept of property. Ownership means the right to possess, use and dispose of the property and exclude the others. If a society does not recognise ownership, it will have no concept of property. In the legal sense, property refers to the bundle of rights that the law confers on a person by virtue of the ownership and possession of an object. Man by exertion of his intellect, either in the form of ideas or technology, converts a natural resource into something of utility, making it an item of property. 

The property can relate to a tangible thing e.g. land or buildings, or to an intangible thing e.g. a copyright. In the former case they are referred to as tangible or corporeal property, in the latter case they are known as intangible or incorporeal property. 

Intellectual property, very broadly, means the legal rights which result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Countries have laws to protect intellectual property for two main reasons. One is to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and the rights of the public in access to those creations. The second is to promote, as a deliberate act of Government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development. 

Tangible property has a big advantage over intangible property: the fact of possession of a physical object by the owner ensures that any other person is excluded from using it. It is not so with the creations of the mind, say, an invention or a book which can be reproduced otherwise. 

This brings us to the concept of intellectual property. It is simply the property created by the application of human mind. It is non-physical (intangible) and it derives its value from idea(s). 

There is no uniform definition of IP. The domain of IP is expanding fast as knowledge and information become key drivers of techno-economic growth and of societal progress in general.

The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), concluded in Stockholm on July 14, 1967 [Article 2(viii)] provides that intellectual property shall include rights relating to:

- literary, artistic and scientific works,

- performances of performing artists, phonograms and broadcasts,

- inventions in all fields of human endeavor,

- scientific discoveries,

- industrial designs,

- trademarks, service marks and commercial names and designations,

- protection against unfair competition,

and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields.

The TRIPS Agreement of the WTO recognises seven categories of intellectual property rights (IPRs), which had already been enshrined in various treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) since the late 19th century:

i) Copyright and Related Rights

ii) Trade marks, Trade names and Service marks

iii) Geographical Indications

iv) Industrial Designs

v) Patents

vi) Layout Designs of Integrated Circuits

vii) Undisclosed Information

Generally speaking, intellectual property law aims at safeguarding creators and other producers of intellectual goods and services by granting them certain time-limited rights to control the use made of those productions. Those rights do not apply to the physical object in which the creation may be embodied but instead to the intellectual creation as such. Intellectual property is traditionally divided into two branches, “industrial property” and “copyright.”

Industrial property consists of rights relating to inventions, trade marks, industrial designs and geographical indications.

Copyright protects rights related to creation of human mind in the fields of literature, scientific, music, art and audio-visual works, etc. Related rights protect performances of performing artists, phonograms and broadcasts. Related rights and neighbouring rights are terms used interchangeably.