The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
|
| In 1883, 11 countries set out to make it easier for their citizens to obtain patent and trademark protection in other countries and became signatories to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. Under the Convention, the patent and trademark protection mechanisms of the member countries were opened up to citizens of other member countries, allowing such citizens to be able to obtain intellectual property protection in each of the member countries. In addition, the Convention established a right of priority, which means that the initial date on which protection was sought for intellectual property serves as the filing date in other countries as long as the intellectual property owner files for protection within other member countries within a specified time period. The Convention has been revised several times since its inception, and is currently administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations. There are now 164 signatories to the Convention.
Any member of the Convention may become a member of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which was signed in 1970 and became effective in 1978. The PCT process does not result in the issuance of a patent but rather establishes a filing date for patent applications in treaty-member countries. An international patent application under the PCT may be filed within a year after an initial filing in one of the member countries, and provides additional time beyond the period allowed for filing foreign patent applications under the Paris Convention. Accordingly, the costs of filing patent applications in several countries can be delayed until such time as the viability of the patent or lack thereof may be more clear and other necessary arrangements can be made for seeing the entire patent process through. The PCT application process is also administered by the WIPO, which publishes international patent applications.
As a result of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations pertaining to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1994, from which the World Trade Organization was formed, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was adopted. TRIPS was a comprehensive international agreement to protect all kinds of intellectual property and adopted many of the provisions of the Paris Convention.
Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |