Intellectual Property

Brief:

Intellectual property is the creation of the mind of inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, slogans, names and pictures used in trade. The intellectual property is legally protected by rights, such as patients, author’s rights and trademarks, which enable persons to win recognition or financial benefit from their creation or invention. The intellectual property system aims at laying down a proper balance between inventor’s interests and the public interest and to provide an environment that helps the prosperity of invention and creation.

The United Nations was keen to establish one of its agencies, that comprises 191 states, including Egypt (International Organization of Intellectual Property), which was established by virtue of an international treaty in Stockholm in 1967, amended in 1979).
This aims at laying down a balance international system for the intellectual property, that encourages creation and invention for the benefit of all.

Intellectual property is the most prominent picture of ownership worth protection. Creative intellect practices represent the main pillars on which the various cultures and scientific and technological advancement are based. Therefore, it is necessary to protect their owners’ rights and provide their products with protection, whether it is literary, artistic or industrial and help in enabling them to exploit and benefit from their production and provide them with incentive to add more creations.

The Intellectual Property rights in the international agreements and treaties are divided into two sections:

• First: Industrial Property: It represents the patents of inventions, names, trademarks, industrial designs and models and geographic indicators.
• Second: Literary and Artistic Property, which are represented in the author’s rights and adjacent rights, such as the right of the audiovisual record producers, performance artists and broadcast organizations.
• As we stated before these rights should be protected to motivate their owners to make more of the intellectual creation in its various pictures. From this point appeared the need for the legal organization, which draws its guarding frame and fair organization of the relation between the author or creator and the publisher and consumer.
• The first legislations, issued in this regard to protect the author’s rights was in England in 1709 to be followed by the state of Connecticut in USA in 1783 and after that France.
• The matter attracted international interest and what followed of efforts to protect the intellectual property rights, starting with Paris Treaty for the Protection of the Industrial Property Rights in 1883, Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886 and its amendments reaching the agreement on trade related aspects of the Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), issued in 1994. This agreement obligated its signatories to extend protection coverage to various rights of intellectual properties to accommodate new fields, that were not covered in the laws of several countries, including Egypt. Among those added fields is the geographical indications, schematic designs of integral circuits, hidden information, rights adjacent to the author’s rights, plant varieties. After that efforts followed to amend these agreements regularly to be in line with the existing developments in each phase to provide sufficient extent of protection to the intellectual property of all types.
• Egypt signed all agreements in this regard in addition to various treaties that protect the intellectual property right of all spectra. The first Egyptian legislation in this regard is the law No. 57 of 1939, regarding the protection of the Trademarks and Data up to the Law No. 132 of 1949 regarding Patents and Industrial Drawings and Models and Law No. 354 of 1954 for protecting the Author’s Rights and to continue thereafter the amendments to be in pace with the international treaties updates. The most important amendment is the law No. 38 of 1992, which inserted in the Author’s Rights Law two types of works to be included in the legal protection, i.e. the audiovisual works and computer works. The status continued as such until the issuance of the law No. 82 of 2002 regarding the Protection of the Intellectual Property Rights.

The Firm is keen on providing services of relevance in accordance with the latest legislative frame, therefore it provides the following services:

• Consultations pertinent to the protection of the author’s original literary and financial rights.
• Consultations pertinent to the protection of the author’s adjacent rights, that have been dedicated as rights for the first time in the Egyptian Law.
• Assisting the Principal in taking all precautionary procedures for protecting the author’s rights, such as applying for cessation of work publishing until issuing a judgment on the dispute.
• Submitting petitions against orders pertinent to the precautionary procedures.
• Submitting applications to the Customs Administration in order not to release goods which constitute transgression on one of the protected financial rights of the holder of intellectual property.
• Pursuing the investigation and claim procedures in the crimes resulting from violation of the author’s rights before the public prosecution and economic courts.
• Filing suits with respect to transgression crimes of the author’s rights as stated in the provisions of the Law.