TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Abstract

The term “intellectual property” refers to a loose cluster of legal doctrines that regulates the use of different sorts of ideas and insignia. Intellectual property denotes the rights over a tangible object of the person whose mental efforts created it. There is no intellectual property in mere ideas. Only the particular expression of an idea is protected. Intellectual property provides rights of ownership in the product created by human intellect but not in the product itself. The fortunes of many businesses now depend heavily on intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights grant the holder, the ability to stop others from doing something, a negative right, but not necessarily a right to do it himself, a positive right. But intellectual property also gives two different rights- one positive and one negative. The positive one is the right to do certain things in relation to the subject-matter, i.e. the owner of the right is entitled to exploit commercially the idea the expressed previously. The negative right entitles its owner to prevent others from doing what his positive right permits him to do. The corollary of this right is the duty imposed on others to not to infringe rights of the owner. Subsequently, the owner of the right enjoys the privilege to exploit the idea in a monopoly position.