And to get a greater idea of the inner workings of the organisation I will be giving details from an interview with the Director General.The Organisation: The World Intellectual Property Organisation is an agency which is devoted to achieving an Intellectual Property system which helps protect innovativeness encourages creativity and looks after the public’s interests. Intellectual Property is “creations of the mind”. There are two types – Industrial property (e.
g. patents, trademarks and designs) and copyright and related rights (e. g. books, movies and the rights of performing artists).
Intellectual Property allows an asset, which is a creation of the mind rather than of physical substance (i. e. is intangible), to be owned and puts in place a system which entitles the creator(s) / owner(s) to benefit from its existence and therefore prevents others trying to pilfer the idea and pass it off as their own. The History: There is a long history surrounding the organisation described above and this history began as early as 1883.
That year saw the dawning of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. This was the first significant step in helping people get protection in countries other than their own in the form of rights referred to as Patents, Trademarks and Designs. Soon after this the Berne Conversion extended protection to novels, poems, songs, paintings and many other creative areas. The next development occurred in 1974 when WIPO became a dedicated agency of the United Nations system of organisations.Four years later in 1978, WIPO stretched its role by taking part in a cooperation agreement with the World Trade Organisation.
Since then the organisation has introduced the WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996, which gives copyright protection to computer programs and the gathering of information which makes up Intellectual Creations and the Patent Law Treaty 2000, which was introduced with the hope of making the processes of national and regional parent applications more comprehensible. Objectives & Functions:Today the World Intellectual Property Organisation has many crucial functions, these include the working together with the Member States to create laws and rules surrounding the Intellectual Property and to help assist in its development. WIPO is also responsible for ensuring that there are standards and methods among the Member States. The World Intellectual Property Organisation must also help the Member States to apply for patents and trademarks.
The organisation also has four systems under which they organise the large amounts of information related to inventions, trademarks and designs.WIPO has an ‘Arbitration and Mediation Centre’ in which they help with Intellectual Property arguments/disagreements such as difficulties with Domain Names. In addition to this the aid governments in ensuring their national Intellectual Property laws and policies are sufficient to protecting the innovative individuals in their countries. They have initiated programs which offer help to Member States to aid in improving their Intellectual Property (IP) procedures and offer advice to them on their policies and laws.They are also heavily involved in striving to make Intellectual Property services as user-friendly and as efficient as possible so as to render it as easy as possible to have the most secure and guarded protection for inventions, designs and ideas.
In recent times the World Intellectual Property Organisation has made it possible to access a free database of registered trademarks and designs. They have also invested greatly in a variety of programs which hope to make the Intellectual Property system more useful. Similarly they keep up to date on the current Intellectual Property news and issues.The organisation has these functions which are in line with some of its objectives such as creating a world reference source for Intellectual Property information and analysis such as the free database mentioned above and the international collaboration which is seen when the organisation helps ensure that the international laws are adequate and satisfactory.
Associates: In order for these tasks and goals to be met there are some important associates at the World Intellectual Property Organisation who are crucial to the effective running of the organisation.One such associate are the Member States, these must firstly meet criteria such as being a member of the Paris Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, or of the Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, be a member of the United Nations or be requested by the General Assembly of WIPO to become a Member State of the organisation. These Member States help agree on a direction and actions taken by the organisation. At present there are 184 Member States which include Ireland, who have their Intellectual Property office in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in Dublin.Another associate of the organisation is he WIPO Secretariat. The WIPO Secretariat is centred in Geneva, where the headquarters of WIPO is based (there are also offices in New York, Singapore, Japan and Brazil).
The workers at the organisation are professionals from many areas of Intellectual Property law and practice. The different sections of the Secretariat are to organise the meetings amongst the Member States and ensure the decisions made at these meetings are brought into force, oversee the administering of registration systems and the creation of methods to ensure the aims and objectives of the organisation are met.Services (Patents) Furthermore, WIPO provide many services, one of which is Patents. A patent is the legal right given to the owner/creator or a product, service or idea that hasn’t been done before and offers a new and different way of doing something.
There are however some criteria which must be met in order to get approval for a patent. The owner/creator must prove that this idea has not existed before, that it is a useful and practical idea. However in some areas it is not possible to patent some ideas such as mathematical theories commercial methods and new systems of medical care.Patents are given by national or regional patent offices.
The WIPO run Patent Cooperation Treaty files the application for the patent. The WIPO website offers the valuable service of being able to look up patents previously filed with them. On searching you are given a brief description of the product/service, a reference number for it, the date on which the patent was implemented and much more information unique to the product/service. Services (Trademarks): In addition to patents there is the trademark. Trademarks are a graphical representation of a product/service e. g.
Tayto.Trademarks are registered under the Madrid Agreement 1891 and which is operated by WIPO in the headquarters in Geneva. Similar to Patents there is an application process before the trademark is granted. By filling out this application the owner can get their trademark protected internationally and according to Francis Gurry the Director General of WIPO, the Indian Parliament has accepted the Madrid Protocol.
If the applicant doesn’t get refused within a certain time frame by their national or regional office for patents then they are still given the protection as if they were registered by the office.The Madrid system makes the process of overseeing the trademark easier, as there is a trouble-free way of changing the registration. In recent times there have been some new developments in the working of the Madrid Agreement. Some of these changes include a change in the amounts required for payment on application or the renewal of a trademark in San Marino, Bulgaria and Netherlands; the most recent being effective from the 17th of November 2010 in San Marino.
As well as patents and trademarks there is another element under the control of WIPO in Geneva.They offer protection and security to the innovation of design. This security is given under the Hague System. This system gives the innovator of the design safeguard in many countries through a single application. However if the innovators country is not part of the Hague Agreement then they cannot be given protection on their design. The latest development in the Hague System consist of items such as the introduction of Norway in April this year and also the revision of the electronic filing of international applications in June of this year.
The Director General, Mr. Gurry1 is confident that the Hague System will see more members in the coming years. Services (Arbitration & Mediation): WIPO has an arbitration and mediation service, which operates from the headquarters. It was founded in 1994 so that debates over commercial issues could be resolved.
It was created by specialists in the area of disagreements, the steps to resolving a dispute are considered internationally to be very appropriate for technological and entertainment issues surrounding Intellectual Property.The majority of the cases include disputes over trademarks, software licenses and patent violation. Some of these cases have occurred in Ireland. A well known case in Ireland is the Arthur Guinness Son & Co. (Dublin) Limited v.
Kevin Graham / Kevin Paul Wayne. The Complainant had sold the beer Guinness and had a trademark of Guinness since the 1700’s. They were an internationally recognised company and had a major segment of the beer market in Ireland and many other countries. The complainant had a website (http://www.
guinness. com) which contained information about the Guinness brand.The respondent in the case set up a website with the domain name guinness-ireland. com. The respondent put the domain name up for sale on a popular Irish bidding site.
The complainant gave notice in writing to the respondent. In the correspondence they were disputing the use of the domain name and were appealing that the domain name registration to Guinness. The respondent did what was asked of them and removed the domain name for sale from the auction site and replied stating that he was going to act in accordance with the requests made in the correspondence from Guinness.The centre ruled that the domain name was to be transferred to the complainant. Another case in Ireland but relating to an International company was Adidas AG and Adidas (Ireland) Limited v.
Gabor Varga and Jozsef Petho. Adidas, Ireland (the complainant) was a worldwide renowned brand of sports clothing and equipment. As with the Guinness case, Adidas had a registered trademark that is unique to their brand. The business name “adidas. ie” was registered with the Companies Registration Office (CRO); they followed this up with registering the domain name in the months.The solicitors of Adidas sent a ‘cease and desist’ to the defendant that they must stop the use of the domain name as shoppers who searching for the Adidas website were instead directed to “adidas.
ie”. The defendants did not reply to this correspondence. The arbitration centre ordered that the domain name be transferred to the complainant. Latest Events & Activities: The World Intellectual Property keeps the public well informed about the latest updates on the happenings and changes in the organisation on their website and through the magazine ‘WIPO Magazine’.
The magazine is available every two months and comes in three different languages. The magazine is released with the hope of informing the public about the latest news and events going on at WIPO and bringing the wider community up to date with the latest developments in “creativity and innovation”. For example the current issue of the ‘WIPO Magazine’ includes interview with the Director General of WIPO, information on the new Intellectual Property database and how innovation is being promoted in Brazil. The website has an extensive section called ‘News and Events’.This area gives data on the latest events through the Press Release and upcoming events, the WIPO magazine is available and communication from the WIPO meetings.
The Director General: Francis Gurry was appointed Director General of WIPO in October 2008. A recent interview him was published in the WIPO magazine. This interview highlights his opinions and concerns about the organisation in the past, present and most importantly in the future. Mr. Gurry believes that significant progress has been made in the modernising of the organisation over the past year.He also believes that advancement has been made in the area of the accessibility of their works to visually impaired members of the public.
The areas of which he has found most difficult to handle are the standardisation across the many countries that have an interest in the organisation. This has required a slower pace of introducing information and resources to ensure that change is effective and runs smoothly in each country. Most of the change is surrounding digital technology and the internet and this change will be “unfolding all the time” according to Mr. Gurry.This puts pressure on copyright to ensure that it gives the necessary protection to creative works despite the transformations occurring. The internet makes it the pilfering of innovation easier and therefore WIPO have to work to guarantee the rights of the creators are being upheld, according to the director general.
As with many other organisations, WIPO has suffered negatively from the economic downturn. The budgets were cut, which has reduced the opportunities available to WIPO. However, Mr. Gurry is confident that the trend is changing with increases in the number of applications for trademarks and many other areas.WIPO are currently working to attract more users to the systems through the promotion of how it is “user-friendly” and “efficient”.
The director general expresses his concerns over how people in developing countries see Intellectual Property as something that is not needed. However he hopes that by WIPO aiding them through training will benefit them and increase the worth of those ideas. Conclusion: The World Intellectual Property Organisation has many different aspects which when brought together have created the organisation that is in place today.Without WIPO and its services, innovation would never come to pass. There would be an understandable fear and “there’s no point” attitude amongst the public as their ideas could be whipped from them.
They would have no method of protecting themselves and many would put their innovations aside out of anxiety of not receiving the benefits and having to watch another person embezzle and profit from their fabrication, without having anyone to consult, to stop this from happening and to protect and reassure them that it shouldn’t, and won’t happen.
