Intellectual Property

Mujahed M.Q Al-Sharabi

Supervisor :Dr.Amer Sallam

March 21, 2018

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 Table of Contents

Contents
1 Introduction 3

2 What are intellectual property rights 3

3 History 4

4 Intellectual Property Rights 6

4.1 Patents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1.1 challengs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1.2 Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2.1 Exclusive Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2.2 Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3 Industrial Design Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4 Plant varieties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.5 Plant varieties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.6 Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.6.1 Fundamental concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.6.2 Oldest registered trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.7 Trade dress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8 Trade secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.1 Defination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.2 value of Tradesecret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.3 Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

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1 Introduction
Intellectual property (or ”IP”) is a category of property that includes intan-
gible creations of the human intellect, and primarily encompasses copyrights,
patents, and trademarks. It also includes other types of rights, such as trade
secrets, publicity rights, moral rights, and rights against unfair competition.
Artistic works like music and literature, as well as some discoveries, inven-
tions, words, phrases, symbols, and designs can all be protected as intellec-
tual property. Intellectual property law has evolved over centuries. It was
not until the 19th century that the term ”intellectual property” began to be
used, and not until the late 20th century that it became commonplace in the
majority of the world.
The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation
of a wide variety of intellectual goods. To achieve this, the law gives people
and businesses property rights to the information and intellectual goods they
create, usually for a limited period of time. Because they can earn profit from
them, this gives economic incentive for their creation.
The intangible nature of intellectual property presents difficulties when
compared with traditional property like land or goods. Unlike traditional
property, intellectual property is indivisible an unlimited number of people
can ”consume” an intellectual good without it being depleted. Additionally,
investments in intellectual goods suffer from problems of appropriation a
landowner can surround their land with a robust fence and hire armed guards
to protect it, but a producer of information or an intellectual good can usually
do very little to stop their first buyer from replicating it and selling it at a
lower price. Balancing rights so that they are strong enough to encourage
the creation of intellectual goods but not so strong that they prevent their
wide use is the primary focus of modern intellectual property law.

2 What are intellectual property rights

Intellectual property rights are like any other property right. They allow
creators, or owners, of patents, trademarks or copyrighted works to benefit
from their own work or investment in a creation. These rights are outlined

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in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides
for the right to benefit from the protection of moral and material interests
resulting from authorship of scientific, literary or artistic productions.

3 History
The Statute of Monopolies (1624) and the British Statute of Anne (1710)
are seen as the origins of patent law and copyright respectively, firmly estab-
lishing the concept of intellectual property.
The first known use of the term intellectual property dates to 1769, when
a piece published in the Monthly Review used the phrase. The first clear
example of modern usage goes back as early as 1808, when it was used as a
heading title in a collection of essays.
The German equivalent was used with the founding of the North Ger-
man Confederation whose constitution granted legislative power over the
protection of intellectual property (Schutz des geistigen Eigentums) to the
confederation. When the administrative secretariats established by the Paris
Convention (1883) and the Berne Convention (1886) merged in 1893, they
located in Berne, and also adopted the term intellectual property in their
new combined title, the United International Bureaux for the Protection of
Intellectual Property.
The organization subsequently relocated to Geneva in 1960, and was suc-
ceeded in 1967 with the establishment of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) by treaty as an agency of the United Nations. Ac-
cording to Lemley, it was only at this point that the term really began to be
used in the United States (which had not been a party to the Berne Conven-
tion), and it did not enter popular usage there until passage of the Bayh-Dole
Act in 1980.
”The history of patents does not begin with inventions, but
rather with royal grants by Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) for
monopoly privileges... Approximately 200 years after the end of
Elizabeth’s reign, however, a patent represents a legal right ob-
tained by an inventor providing for exclusive control over the
production and sale of his mechanical or scientific invention...
[demonstrating] the evolution of patents from royal prerogative
to common-law doctrine.”
The term can be found used in an October 1845 Massachusetts Circuit

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Court ruling in the patent case Davoll et al. v. Brown., in which Justice
Charles L. Woodbury wrote that ”only in this way can we protect intellectual
property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests are as much a
man’s own...as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.” The statement
that ”discoveries are..property” goes back earlier. Section 1 of the French law
of 1791 stated, ”All new discoveries are the property of the author; to assure
the inventor the property and temporary enjoyment of his discovery, there
shall be delivered to him a patent for five, ten or fifteen years.” In Europe,
French author A. Nion mentioned proprit intellectuelle in his Droits civils
des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs, published in 1846.
Until recently, the purpose of intellectual property law was to give as
little protection as possible in order to encourage innovation. Historically,
therefore, they were granted only when they were necessary to encourage
invention, limited in time and scope.
The concept’s origins can potentially be traced back further. Jewish law
includes several considerations whose effects are similar to those of modern
intellectual property laws, though the notion of intellectual creations as prop-
erty does not seem to exist notably the principle of Hasagat Ge’vul (unfair
encroachment) was used to justify limited-term publisher (but not author)
copyright in the 16th century. In 500 BCE, the government of the Greek
state of Sybaris offered one year’s patent ”to all who should discover any
new refinement in luxury”.
According to Morin, ”the global intellectual property regime is currently
in the midst of a paradigm shift”. Indeed, up until the early 2000s the global
IP regime used to be dominated by high standards of protection characteristic
of IP laws from Europe or the United States, with a vision that uniform ap-
plication of these standards over every country and to several fields with little
consideration over social, cultural or environmental values or of the national
level of economic development. Morin argues that ”the emerging discourse
of the global IP regime advocates for greater policy flexibility and greater
access to knowledge, especially for developing countries.” Indeed, with the
Development Agenda adopted by WIPO in 2007, a set of 45 recommenda-
tions to adjust WIPOs activities to the specific needs of developing countries
and aim to reduce distortions especially on issues such as patients access
to medicines, Internet users access to information, farmers access to seeds,
programmers access to source codes or students access to scientific articles.
However, this paradigm shift has not yet manifested itself in concrete legal
reforms at the international level.

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4 Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property rights include: patents, copyright, industrial design
rights, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, geographical indications,
and in some jurisdictions trade secrets. There are also more specialized or
derived varieties of sui generis exclusive rights, such as circuit design rights
(called mask work rights in the US) and supplementary protection certifi-
cates for pharmaceutical products (after expiry of a patent protecting them)
and database rights (in European law).

4.1 Patents
A patent is a form of right granted by the government to an inventor, giving
the owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to
sell, and importing an invention for a limited period of time, in exchange for
the public disclosure of the invention. An invention is a solution to a specific
technological problem, which may be a product or a process and generally
has to fulfill three main requirements: it has to be new, not obvious and
there needs to be an industrial applicability.
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state or inter-
governmental organization to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of
time in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. An invention
is a solution to a specific technological problem and is a product or a process.
Patents are a form of intellectual property.

4.1.1 challengs
In most jurisdictions, there are ways for third parties to challenge the validity
of an allowed or issued patent at the national patent office; these are called
opposition proceedings. It is also possible to challenge the validity of a patent
in court. In either case, the challenging party tries to prove that the patent
should never have been granted. There are several grounds for challenges: the
claimed subject matter is not patentable subject matter at all; the claimed
subject matter was actually not new, or was obvious to experts in the field, at
the time the application was filed; or that some kind of fraud was committed
during prosecution with regard to listing of inventors, representations about
when discoveries were made, etc. Patents can be found to be invalid in whole
or in part for any of these reasons.

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4.1.2 Benefits
• Patents provide incentives for economically efficient research and de-
velopment (R-D). A study conducted annually by the IPTS shows that
the 2,000 largest global companies invested more than 430 billion euros
in 2008 in their R-D departments. If the investments can be considered
as inputs of R-D, real products and patents are the outputs. Based on
these groups, a project named Corporate Invention Board, had mea-
sured and analyzed the patent portfolios to produce an original picture
of their technological profiles. Supporters of patents argue that without
patent protection, R-D spending would be significantly less or elimi-
nated altogether, limiting the possibility of technological advances or
breakthroughs.[citation needed] Corporations would be much more con-
servative about the R-D investments they made, as third parties would
be free to exploit any developments. This second justification is closely
related to the basic ideas underlying traditional property rights.[specify]
Specifically, ”[t]he patent internalizes the externality by giving the [in-
ventor] a property right over its invention.” A 2008 study by Yi Quan of
Kellogg School of Management showed that countries instituting patent
protection on pharmaceuticals did not necessarily have an increase in
domestic pharmaceutical innovation. Only countries with ”higher lev-
els of economic development, educational attainment, and economic
freedom” showed an increase. There also appeared to be an optimal
level of patent protection that increased domestic innovation.

• In accordance with the original definition of the term ”patent”, patents

are intended to facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovations into
the public domain for the common good. Thus patenting can be viewed
as contributing to open hardware after an embargo period (usually of
20 years). If inventors did not have the legal protection of patents, in
many cases, they might prefer or tend to keep their inventions secret
(e.g. keep trade secrets). Awarding patents generally makes the details
of new technology publicly available, for exploitation by anyone after
the patent expires, or for further improvement by other inventors. Fur-
thermore, when a patent’s term has expired, the public record ensures
that the patentee’s invention is not lost to humanity.

• In many industries (especially those with high fixed costs and either low
marginal costs or low reverse engineering costs computer processors,

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and pharmaceuticals for example), once an invention exists, the cost of
commercialization (testing, tooling up a factory, developing a market,
etc.) is far more than the initial conception cost. (For example, the
internal rule of thumb at several computer companies in the 1980s was
that post-R-D costs were 7-to-1.)

Figure 1: U.S. patent.

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4.2 Copyright
A copyright gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usu-
ally for a limited time. Copyright may apply to a wide range of creative,
intellectual, or artistic forms, or ”works”. Copyright does not cover ideas
and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are ex-
pressed.
Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants
the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution.
This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not abso-
lute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including
fair use. A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only
the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves.
Copyrights are considered ”territorial rights”, which means that they do not
extend beyond the territory of a specific jurisdiction. While many aspects of
national copyright laws have been standardized through international copy-
right agreements, copyright laws vary by country. Typically, the duration of
a copyright spans the author’s life plus 50 to 100 years (that is, copyright
typically expires 50 to 100 years after the author dies, depending on the juris-
diction). Some countries require certain copyright formalities to establishing
copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without for-
mal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though
some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.

4.2.1 Exclusive Rights

Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:

• to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies

(including, typically, electronic copies)

• to import or export the work

• to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work)

• to perform or display the work publicly

• to sell or cede these rights to others

• to transmit or display by radio or video.

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4.2.2 Duration
Copyright subsists for a variety of lengths in different jurisdictions. The
length of the term can depend on several factors, including the type of work
(e.g. musical composition, novel), whether the work has been published, and
whether the work was created by an individual or a corporation. In most of
the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either
50 or 70 years. In the United States, the term for most existing works is a
fixed number of years after the date of creation or publication. Under most
countries’ laws (for example, the United Statesand the United Kingdom),
copyrights expire at the end of the calendar year in question.
The length and requirements for copyright duration are subject to change
by legislation, and since the early 20th century there have been a number
of adjustments made in various countries, which can make determining the
duration of a given copyright somewhat difficult. For example, the United
States used to require copyrights to be renewed after 28 years to stay in
force, and formerly required a copyright notice upon first publication to gain
coverage. In Italy and France, there were post-wartime extensions that could
increase the term by approximately 6 years in Italy and up to about 14 in
France. Many countries have extended the length of their copyright terms
(sometimes retroactively). International treaties establish minimum terms
for copyrights, but individual countries may enforce longer terms than those.
In the United States, all books and other works published before 1923
have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. In addition, works
published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years
after first publication year also are in the public domain. Hirtle points out
that the great majority of these works (including 93precent of the books) were
not renewed after 28 years and are in the public domain. Books originally
published outside the US by non-Americans are exempt from this renewal
requirement, if they are still under copyright in their home country.
But if the intended exploitation of the work includes publication (or dis-
tribution of derivative work, such as a film based on a book protected by
copyright) outside the U.S., the terms of copyright around the world must
be considered. If the author has been dead more than 70 years, the work is
in the public domain in most, but not all, countries.
In 1998, the length of a copyright in the United States was increased by 20
years under the Copyright Term Extension Act. This legislation was strongly
promoted by corporations which had valuable copyrights which otherwise

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Figure 2: Expansion of U.S. copyright law (currently based on the date of
creation or publication).

would have expired, and has been the subject of substantial criticism on this
point.

4.3 Industrial Design Rights

An industrial design right (sometimes called ”design right” or design patent)
protects the visual design of objects that are not purely utilitarian. An indus-
trial design consists of the creation of a shape, configuration or composition
of pattern or color, or combination of pattern and color in three-dimensional
form containing aesthetic value. An industrial design can be a two- or three-
dimensional pattern used to produce a product, industrial commodity or
handicraft.

4.4 Plant varieties

Plant breeders’ rights or plant variety rights are the rights to commercially
use a new variety of a plant. The variety must amongst others be novel and
distinct and for registration the evaluation of propagating material of the
variety is considered.

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4.5 Plant varieties
Plant breeders’ rights or plant variety rights are the rights to commercially
use a new variety of a plant. The variety must amongst others be novel and
distinct and for registration the evaluation of propagating material of the
variety is considered.

4.6 Trademarks
A trademark is a recognizable sign, design or expression which distinguishes
products or services of a particular trader from the similar products or ser-
vices of other traders.

4.6.1 Fundamental concepts

The essential function of a trademark is to exclusively identify the commercial
source or origin of products or services, so a trademark, properly called,
indicates source or serves as a badge of origin. In other words, trademarks
serve to identify a particular business as the source of goods or services. The
use of a trademark in this way is known as trademark use. Certain exclusive
rights attach to a registered mark.
Trademark rights generally arise out of the use of, or to maintain exclusive
rights over, that sign in relation to certain products or services, assuming
there are no other trademark objections.
Different goods and services have been classified by the International
(Nice) Classification of Goods and Services into 45 Trademark Classes (1 to
34 cover goods, and 35 to 45 cover services). The idea behind this system
is to specify and limit the extension of the intellectual property right by
determining which goods or services are covered by the mark, and to unify
classification systems around the world.

4.6.2 Oldest registered trademarks

The oldest registered trademark has various different claimants, enumerated
below:

• United Kingdom: 1876 The Bass Brewery’s label incorporating its

triangle logo for ale was the first trademark to be registered under the
Trade Mark Registration Act 1875.

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 • United States: there are at least three claims:

– A design mark with an eagle and a ribbon and the words ”Eco-
nomical, Brilliant”was the first registered trademark, filed by the
Averill Chemical Paint Company on August 30, 1870 under the
Trademark Act of 1870. However, in the Trade-Mark Cases, 100
U.S. 82 (1879), the U.S. Supreme Court held the 1870 Act to be
unconstitutional.
– The oldest U.S. registered trademark still in use is trademark reg.
no 11210, a depiction of the Biblical figure Samson wrestling a
lion, registered in the United States on May 27, 1884 by the J.P.
Tolman Company (now Samson Rope Technologies, Inc.), a rope-
making company

• Germany: 1875 The Krupp steel company registered three seamless

train wheel tires, which are put on top of each other, as its label in
1875, under the German Trade Mark Protection Law of 1874. The
seamless train wheel tire did not break, unlike iron tires with seams,
and was patented by Krupp in Prussia in 1853.

Figure 3: Bass Brewery’s logo became the first image to be registered as a

trademark in the UK, in 1876.

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4.7 Trade dress
Trade dress is a legal term of art that generally refers to characteristics of
the visual and aesthetic appearance of a product or its packaging (or even
the design of a building) that signify the source of the product to consumers.

4.8 Trade secrets

A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or
compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascer-
tainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over com-
petitors and customers. There is no formal government protection granted;
each business must take measures to guard its own trade secrets (e.g., For-
mula of its soft drinks is a trade secret for Coca-Cola.).

4.8.1 Defination
The precise language by which a trade secret is defined varies by jurisdiction,
as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret
protection. Three factors are common to all such definitions:
A trade secret is information that

• is not generally known to the public;

• confers economic benefit on its holder because the information is not

publicly known;

• is the subject of reasonable efforts by the holder to maintain its secrecy.

4.8.2 value of Tradesecret

rade secrets are an important, but invisible component of a company’s in-
tellectual property (IP). Their contribution to a company’s value, measured
as its market capitalization, can be major. Being invisible, that contribu-
tion is hard to measure. Patents are a visible contribution, but delayed, and
unsuitable for internal innovations. Having an internal scoreboard provides
insight into the cost of risks of employees leaving to serve or start competing
ventures.

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4.8.3 Protection
In contrast to registered intellectual property, trade secrets are, by definition,
by their ”owner”? What about leaks? to the world at large. Instead, owners
of trade secrets seek to protect trade secret information from competitors by
instituting special procedures for handling it, as well as technological and
legal security measures. Legal protections include non-disclosure agreements
(NDAs), and work-for-hire and non-compete clauses. In other words, in
exchange for an opportunity to be employed by the holder of secrets, an
employee may sign agreements to not reveal their prospective employer’s
proprietary information, to surrender or assign to their employer ownership
rights to intellectual work and work-products produced during the course (or
as a condition) of employment, and to not work for a competitor for a given
period of time (sometimes within a given geographic region). Violation of the
agreement generally carries the possibility of heavy financial penalties which
operate as a disincentive to reveal trade secrets. However, proving a breach
of an NDA by a former stakeholder who is legally working for a competitor
or prevailing in a lawsuit for breaching a non-compete clause can be very
difficult. A holder of a trade secret may also require similar agreements from
other parties he or she deals with, such as vendors, licensees, and board
members.
As a company can protect its confidential information through NDA,
work-for-hire, and non-compete contracts with its stakeholders (within the
constraints of employment law, including only restraint that is reasonable
in geographic- and time-scope), these protective contractual measures effec-
tively create a perpetual monopoly on secret information that does not expire
as would a patent or copyright. The lack of formal protection associated with
registered intellectual property rights, however, means that a third party not
bound by a signed agreement is not prevented from independently duplicat-
ing and using the secret information once it is discovered, such as through
reverse engineering.
Green Chartreuse liqueur protected by confidential information of the in-
gredients Therefore, trade secrets such as secret formulae are often protected
by restricting the key information to a few trusted individuals. Famous ex-
amples of products protected by trade secrets are Chartreuse liqueur and
Coca-Cola.
Because protection of trade secrets can, in principle, extend indefinitely,
it therefore may provide an advantage over patent protection and other regis-

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 Figure 4: Coca-Cola.

tered intellectual property rights, which last only for a specific duration. The
Coca-Cola company, for example, has no patent for the formula of Coca-Cola
and has been effective in protecting it for many more years than the 20 years
of protection that a patent would have provided. In fact, Coca-Cola refused
to reveal its trade secret under at least two judges’ orders.

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