Across the globe States have laws to protect intellectual property primarily for two reasons.
- Firstly, providing statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations as well as giving rights to the public in accessing those creations;
- Secondly, to promote, as a deliberate act of Government policy, creativity and the propagation and application of its results aiding in fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development[1].
The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides vide Article 2 (viii)[2] 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 endeavour;
- 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.”
Areas discussed as literary, artistic and scientific works are a part of the copyright branch of intellectual property law. The areas mentioned as performances of performing artists, phonograms and broadcasts are oft called “related rights,” i.e., rights related to copyright.
Inventions, industrial designs, trademarks, service marks and commercial names and designations make up the industrial property branch of intellectual property rights. The portion referred to as the protection against unfair competition can also be reflected as being a part of that branch, furthermore as Article 1(2) of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (Stockholm Act of 1967) (the “Paris Convention”) state that “the repression of unfair competition” as one of the areas of “the protection of industrial property”; the said Convention includes that:
“Any act of competition contrary to honest practices in industrial and commercial matters constitutes an act of unfair competition” (Article 10(2)).
The concept of “industrial property” encompasses inventions and industrial designs. In other words, inventions can be defined as new solutions to technical problems and industrial designs as appealing creations defining the look of industrial products. Additionally, industrial property also includes trademarks, service marks, commercial names and designations, including indications of source and appellations of origin, and protection against unfair competition.
Herein the concept of intellectual creations, despite in existence, is less prominent, but what is of prime importance is that the object of industrial property mostly contains signs dispersing material to consumers, particularly in reference to products and services offered in the market, and their protection is directed against illegitimate use of such signs which is likely to dupe consumers, and misleading practices on a general plain.
Scientific discoveries, cannot be regarded as the same as inventions. The Geneva Treaty on the International Recording of Scientific Discoveries (1978) promotes the definition of a scientific discovery as “the recognition of phenomena, properties or laws of the material universe not hitherto recognized and capable of verification” (Article 1(1)(i)). Inventions are innovative solutions to specific technical problems naturally relying on the properties or laws of the material universe, but these properties or laws must be properties or laws not recognized previously.
[1]World Intellectual Property Organisation [at http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/iprm/pdf/ch1.pdf] [2]Concluded in Stockholm on July 14, 1967
