When Property Does Not Mean Property: An Analysis of the Existence of International Intellectual Property†

Abstract

AbstractThis paper endeavours to dispel the logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights and aims to show that the term “international intellectual property” may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort.To suggest that “there is no such thing as international intellectual property” may have been particularly reasonable prior to the end of the 19thcentury when there was little or no international obligations to protect intellectual property. Nowadays, however, the term “international intellectual property” is, at the very least, misunderstood, if not a clear term that has worked its way into the international legal lexicon with each international intellectual property agreement entered into since the beginning of the beginning of the international period.It is quite plain that individual intellectual property rights such as copyright, patents, registered designs, and registered and unregistered trade mark rights are not international in scope or nature. It is also quite clear that intellectual property rights are territorial in nature as they are derived from national law and are governed exclusively within jurisdictions of such law. This principle is trite and was better observed in a World Intellectual Property Organization survey:Each country determines, for its own territory and independently from any other country, what it is to be protected as intellectual property, who should benefit from such protection, for how long and how protection should be enforced.Despite an apparently logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights, the term “international intellectual property” may infer something more than this. Rather than confining the term to basic interpretation of the words which make the term, international intellectual property may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort. While the standards of recognition and rights granted in relation to such products of intellect may vary between nations, the source of such products remains the same and it is such property which various international agreements seek to govern. It is given through developments in international intellectual property agreements, that a definition of the term may be implied, if not derived.In this paper, I endeavour to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property. As such, I will first establish that there is such a thing as „intellectual property,” despite arguments against the term. I will then move on to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property, particularly in light of the developments in international intellectual property agreements.