Intellectual properties as intangible goods

Abstract

The paper is based on the fact that information and digiware are not the only intangible goods which will be important in e-commerce in the near future. Besides them, there are other kinds of intangible goods which can be sold by e-commerce, or rather e-government: incorporeal chattels. The paper focuses on intellectual properties such as patents or trademarks which are the privileges given by a government to use a certain knowledge, information or idea or a certain constellation of letters exclusively. The first part of the paper introduces the fundamentals of intellectual properties. Afterwards the paper shows different aspects of the trade of intellectual property using electronic media. Starting from trademark research, the paper creates in a first step a generic reference process to trade information about intellectual property. In a second step, the differences to the trade of incorporeal chattels are focussed on. In the third part, the paper presents the project MIPEX (Message Based Intellectual Property Exchange), an initiative of several trademark offices all around Europe to create an e-commerce solution for intellectual property in Europe. The Swiss Trademark Office (the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property), plays an important role in the MIPEX-Project as the responsible office for trademark filing.