Basic International Conventions and International Institutions relating to Intellectual Property

An app developer in Pune launches her game in Singapore, Brazil and Germany on the same day. Her copyright exists in all three countries, yet no world copyright office issued it. Her brand name may be free to use in one of them. The patent she filed in India helps her claim a date abroad. All of this works because countries have signed treaties, and a handful of international bodies run the machinery. This topic is the map of those treaties and bodies; the next five topics zoom in on the main ones.

In two minutes

International protection of intellectual property rests on treaties that oblige states to give foreign nationals equal treatment and minimum standards (Paris, Berne, Rome, TRIPS and others), and on institutions that administer them, chiefly WIPO and the WTO.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Intellectual Property Laws on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.