Thomas O’Connor
Senior Professor, University of New Orleans, USA.
Clifford Koen
Professor, University of New Orleans, USA.Intellectual Property Rights: Their Development,
Protection, and Orderly Transfer in the Twenty-First
Century World (With Particular Emphasis on
Emerging Nations)
Put simply, intellectual property is unique property that is created
by the creative, technical, or scientific efforts of individuals or groups.
Intellectual property is valuable, and in some cases that value can be
appraised. In others, it must be established by negotiation. The forms
of intellectual property usually recognized as having true, quantifiable
value are works of writing or art protected by copyrights, discoveries or
inventions protected by patents, company names and marks protected
by trademarks, work-products protected by contract, and trade secrets.
The concepts of the copyright, the patent, and the trademark are legal
ones, all growing out of the philosophical recognition that persons or
firms that have invested time, effort, and money in the creation of
written or quasi-written work, scientific invention, or running a
business well should be rewarded for their creativity and diligence.
Since intellectual property is property, it can be transferred by all
of the methods available for the transfer of physical property: it can be
sold, rented, given as a gift, or licensed. It may also be stolen.
International relations provides methods for protecting intellectual
property from theft – treaties regarding such property exist and have
been accepted by the majority of the world’s nations. Some countries,
however, are not signatories to the major “technology transfer” treaties
- the Berne and Paris Conventions – and those nations, at least to some
extent, have a reputation for using the patents, trademarks, and
copyrighted material of others without compensation. While they may
do so with impunity domestically, when they move into extranational
space, they become subject to penalties which may be quite severe. This
paper examines the problems growing out of such behavior and
proposes some solutions.