JAIPUR NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Seedling school of law and governance

Topic: International Organisations and

International documents: Role and Importance
regarding Intellectual Property

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Mr. Suresh Kumar Dotania Gauri Dwivedi
Assistant professor B.A. LL.B.
(Hons.)
SSLG, JNU 7th SEM.
.

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 DECLARATION

This is to certify that the project work entitled “International organisations and
International documents: Role and importance regarding Intellectual Property”
submitted by Gauri Dwivedi in the partial fulfillment of the award of U.G. B.A. LL.B
of the Jaipur national university, seedling school of law and governance is a record of
her work under my supervision and guidance. The matter embodied in the dissertation
has not been submitted elsewhere.

Date of submission: Supervisor:

30th October, 2023 Mr. Suresh Kumar Dotania
Assistant professor
SSLG

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to express my sincere gratitude, regards and thanks to my respected project

guide Mr. Suresh Kumar Dotania for his excellent guidance and unstained support. It
is my achievement to be guided by him. He is a constant soured of encouragement
and momentum that any intricacy becomes simple. I gained a lot of valuable and
prompt suggestions from him during my assignment work.

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 INTRODUCTION

just as our nature is composed of the five fundamental elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and
Space—and our Constitution has some fundamental aspects that cannot be changed or
amended by legislation. We could not hope to survive on this earth without them. Similarly,
several international accords shaped intellectual property rights. The protection of creative
works, literary works, industrial works, and inventions was greatly aided by these
international treaties. It is said that all inventions come from need. A great desire to conquer
these challenges forever emerged as a result of certain events that occurred in the globe.

After the Industrial revolution of Britain, which began in the 1780s, it ultimately led to
expansion in both steam power and iron manufacturing. New discoveries and innovations that
could facilitate their job were in high demand. It was a transformative era. A massive rat race
of innovations resulted from people moving from agricultural areas to large and small
factories and workshops.

The late 1800s saw the emergence of a more globalised technology transfer and a rise in
global commerce, which prompted the need to standardise industrial property rules across the
board for both trademarks and patents.

That’s how the concept of intellectual property came to the light and the need to make laws
related to intellectual property in international point of view.

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What is Intellectual Property?

A company's or an individual's collection of intangible assets that are legally protected from
being used or implemented by third parties without permission is referred to as intellectual
property. Any non-physical asset owned by a business or individual is considered an
intangible asset.

The idea behind intellectual property is that some creations of human intelligence need to
have the same legal protections as tangible goods, which are physical property. Laws
protecting both types of property are in effect in the majority of industrialised economies.

Intangible assets are under the category of intellectual property. This implies that they are not
necessarily physically present and cannot be retained. These resources are the result of human
ingenuity. Intellectual property encompasses a wide range of items, including but not limited
to artwork, symbols, trademarks, brand names, and designs.

In today's increasingly knowledge-based economy, intellectual property is so valuable that

companies take great care to identify and safeguard it. Additionally, creating valuable
intellectual property involves significant time and mental commitments. This results into
significant financial outlays made by businesses and private citizens that others shouldn't be
able to access without authorization.

Patents, copyright, and trademarks are a few examples of intellectual property that is legally
protected and allow people to profit financially or get notoriety from their inventions. The
Intellectual Property system seeks to promote an atmosphere where creativity and innovation
may thrive by finding the ideal balance between inventors' interests and the larger public
interest.

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What are international conventions?

Treaties or agreements between nations constitute international conventions. It is common to

use the phrases "international convention" interchangeably with terms such as "international
treaty," "international agreement," "compact," or "contract between states."

Conventions between two or more states might be generic or specialised in character.

Bilateral treaties are agreements between two states; plurilateral treaties are agreements
between a few states (but more than two). Multilateral treaties are agreements reached by
several governments.

International Conventions on Intellectual Property

Rights

1. PARIS CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION

OF INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY

Due to the diversity of national laws, it was challenging to get protection for innovations
in different parts of the world when there was no worldwide treaty on industrial property.
Furthermore, simultaneous filing of patent applications in each nation avoided the novelty
of the invention in other nations being destroyed by publication in one nation.

WIPO is also responsible for managing the Paris Convention. It was created to bring
some worldwide coherence to intellectual property rules. It was ratified in Paris on March
20, 1883, and went into effect on July 7, 1884. In addition to various rules for harassment
and the national handling of unfair competition, it offers fundamental standards for the

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 protection of intellectual property, including patents, utility models, industrial designs,
trademarks, service marks, trade names, sources of information, and indicators of appeal.

As per the anti-discrimination principle of the convention, a member country has the
authority to provide equal protection and benefits to nationals of other member nations,
just as it does to its own citizens. Numerous other intellectual property agreements and
treaties likewise base their essential principles on the convention's anti-discrimination
stance. India signed this treaty in 1998.

2. BERNE CONVENTION FOR PROTECTION OF

LITERARY AND ARTISTIC WORKS

The initial steps towards worldwide copyright protection were taken in the mid-1800s thanks
to bilateral treaties. Many accords that allowed for the mutual recognition of rights were
signed, but they lacked uniformity and were not sufficiently broad. The Berne Convention for
the Preservation of Literary and Artistic Works was established in response to the need for a
unified framework. The first international agreement pertaining to copyright is the Berne
Convention. You can apply from any state. adopted in Berne on September 9, 1886, and
going into effect on December 4, 1887. It was first signed at Berne, Switzerland, in 1886. It
underwent revisions in 1914, 1928, 1948, 1967, 1971, and 1979. This Convention is based on
three fundamental principles:

 The concept of "national treatment" holds that any works created in a

contracting state—whether the author is a citizen of that state or the work was
previously published there—should be afforded the same protections as those
created in non-contracting jurisdictions.
 The "automatic" protection concept, states that protection should not depend
on formality compliance.
 The "independence" concept of protection states that protection must exist
regardless of whether it does in the nation where the work was first created.
Should a contracting state offer protection for an extended period exceeding
the minimum stipulated by the Convention and the work loses its protection in

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 the country of origin, protection may be withheld after the country of origin
loses its protection.

India became a signatory of the Berne Convention on April 1, 1928.

3. UNIVERSAL COPYRIGHT CONVENTION

The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), which was intended to replace the Berne
Convention, was initially established in Geneva in 1952. Certain countries refused to sign the
Berne Convention because they disagreed with certain clauses of the agreement. Specifically,
the United States, which at the time was the only country to require copyright works to
always display the © mark and to offer protection on a fixed term registration basis through
the Library of Congress. According to this, the US could not abide with the Berne
Convention unless it made a number of legal modifications.

On March 1st, 1989, the US officially joined the Berne Convention, and as of right now, only
works first published in the US by US persons need to be registered. Authors in nations that
did not sign the Berne Convention might nevertheless benefit from the UCC's worldwide
protection. In order to guarantee that the labour of people of countries covered by the Berne
Convention must be safeguarded in non-Berne Convention nations, the countries that made
up the Berne Convention also joined the UCC.

Article 17 of the UCC states that the convention does not affect the provisions of the Berne
Convention and further states that any country that withdraws from the Berne Convention
after January 1, 1951, will not be eligible for protection under the UCC in countries that are
members of the Berne Convention Union. This ensures that the UCC's existence did not
result in a conflict with the Berne Convention. India became a signatory on 31st March,1964.

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 4. WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
ORGANISATION (WIPO)

The rights of inventors and owners of intellectual property are protected globally by the
World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), an international organisation. It was
ratified in Stockholm on July 14, 1967, and went into effect on April 26, 1970. WIPO came
into establishment under this Convention with two main objectives:

 For the promotion of the protection of intellectual property worldwide and;

 to safeguard administrative cooperation among the intellectual property Unions
established by the treaties which are under WIPO administration.

On May 1, 1975, the United States of America formally joined WIPO. The Paris Convention,
which established an International Bureau to handle administrative duties including planning
member state meetings, came into effect in 1884 and gave rise to WIPO. At that time, there
were 14 member states. Similar to the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention established an
International Bureau to handle administrative duties. Together, these two little bureaus
established the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property, an
international organisation, in 1893. The World Intellectual Property Organisation of today is
a dynamic entity with 185 member states, 938 staff members from 95 different countries, and
a mission and mandate that are always expanding. It was once a small organisation with
seven employees and its headquarters in Berne, Switzerland. With time, this International
Bureau developed to become acknowledged as WIPO in 1970. In 1996, WIPO expanded its
involvement into globalised trade by entering into a cooperation agreement with the World
Trade Organisation. In 1974, WIPO became a specialised agency of the United Nations.

According to the Convention held at Stockholm on 14th July 1967 and Article 2(viii) of the
convention following rights are included in Intellectual Property Rights:

 Literary, artistic and scientific works;

 Performances of performing artists, phonograms and broadcasts;
 Inventions in all fields of human behavior;

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  Scientific discoveries;
 Industrial designs;
 Trademarks;
 Service marks;
 Commercial names and designations;
 Protection against unfair competition;
 All other rights resulting from Intellectual activity in industrial scientific, literary or
artistic fields; etc.

5. TRADE RELATED ASPECTS OF

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (TRIPS)

December 15, 1993 marked the end of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade talks, which
were conducted within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or
GATT.On April 15, 1994, in Marrakech, the agreement that created the World Trade
Organisation (the "WTO Agreement") was put into effect. For the first time, talks for
intellectual property rights in relation to international commerce were included in the GATT
negotiations. The agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, or the
"TRIPS Agreement," was the outcome of those discussions and is contained in an annexe to
the WTO agreement.

On January 1, 1995, the WTO Agreement came into force, along with the TRIPS Agreement,
which is legally obligatory on all WTO members. The previous agreement, known as the
World Trade Organisation, came into effect on January 1, 1995, and created a new
organisation. WTO member states were given a grace period following the execution of the
WTO founding agreement before being required to implement the TRIPS Agreement. The
most comprehensive and important international agreement on intellectual property rights is
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The WTO's member nations
are automatically bound by the agreement. One of the most significant accords to advance
intellectual property internationally has been TRIPS. TRIPS did not establish a worldwide
minimum standard for patents, but it did establish a global minimum standard for the

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protection and enforcement of other kinds of intellectual property. Promoting appropriate and
effective intellectual property rights protection and making sure that laws and processes to
uphold such rights don't inadvertently obstruct lawful trade are the two key goals of the trade-
related element of intellectual property.

Issues covered by TRIPS:

 How basic principles of the trading system and other international intellectual
property agreements should be applied.
 How to give adequate protection to intellectual property rights.
 How countries should enforce those rights adequately in their own territories.
 How to settle disputes on intellectual property between members.
 Special transitional arrangements during the period when the new system is being
introduced.

A number of significant business-related issues of intellectual property are outlined in the

TRIPS agreement. This specifically calls on Member States to comply to the Paris
Agreement, the Berne Convention, and other WTO treaties in addition to their own standards
for granting intellectual property monopolies for a certain amount of time. The guidelines
include time restrictions, enforcement clauses, dispute resolution procedures for intellectual
property, and minimal requirements for awarding monopolies over any type of IP. All
industrialised nations were allowed a year from the date of signing the TRIPS agreement to
execute its terms when it went into effect on January 1st, 1995. Up to 2000, developing
nations and transitioning economies were given a five-year extension. Least developed
nations (LDCs) have eleven years as of 2006 to comply. According to several nations, long-
term goals should be met. The compliance time for pharmaceutical patents in certain LDCs
has been extended to 2016. Currently, there are 30 LDCs within the WTO organization bound
by TRIPS and another 10 LDCs are awaiting accession.

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 CONCLUSION

These agreements served to both provide for the IPR's intended use and to establish a
minimal level for its preservation. By offering a minimal baseline for IPR enforcement, these
agreements enable right holders to defend their legal claims in civil court or through
administrative procedures.

In order to effectively take legal action against any infringement of intellectual property
rights covered by these agreements, member states are required by law to provide
enforcement mechanisms. This includes the provision of remedies and immediate measures
to prevent infringement. The enforcement processes must be "fair and equitable," "not unduly
complex or costly, or prevent unreasonable deadlines or unreasonable delays," according to
the obligations of member states.

These conventions were made so that the work of a person cannot be taken away from him
just because it’s a different country. Since the laws were not neutral in all countries of the
world it was very difficult for a person to gain the appreciation and benefits that one should
receive when he creates something because anyone else around the world could copy his
life’s work and gain the benefits which needed to be stopped now because of these
international conventions and organisations it is made possible.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 www.wipo.int
 www.lexisnexis.co.uk
 www.law.cornell.edu
 www.investopedia.com

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