INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THEIR BASIC PROBLEMS

Intellectual Property Rights plays a crucial role in world trade across all sectors. The pact on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international agreement which is administered by the World Trade Organisation who has framed out the minimum standard for various Intellectual Property Rights. India is also a member of TRIPS.

Intellectual Property Rights as per the definition given by the World Intellectual Property Organisation is the “creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce”. In essence, intellectual rights refer to the brand, innovation, or design or any other kind of things that a business or the individual has legal rights over.

There are four types of Intellectual Property Rights:

1. Patent: Patent is the title given to the owner to protect his invention from getting exploited by others. The patent protects the ornamental and functional features. A patent allows the owner to exclude other people from inventing, designing, using or even importing the invention that has been patented. 
2. Trade Mark: Trademark is a specific sign or mark through which the business got its identification. It can be word or words or any other feature. This help in distinguishing the business from its competitors.
3. Copyright: The legal term that is given to the person for the creation of the original content. These creations include art, music, drama, script or anything of this sort. It provides the authority to control the way their creation will be used thereafter. Copyrights protection has two parts: Moral rights that ensure that the creator will be considered as the author of that production as well as to object to any distortion. Another one is economical rights that allow the author to decide how that work will be used and monetary benefits will be received.
4. Trade Secrets: This term refers to proprietary and secret information that is of commercial value. Such information is not available to the public and the owner takes a step to maintain its secrecy. This information will be kept secret until it becomes useless or when the steps are taken to keep it as a secret not maintained anymore.

BASIC PROBLEMS:

When it comes to the issue faced by the Intellectual Property Rights, the main issue is not the legal loopholes. The primary issue is a lack of awareness among people about these rights. In India, there are strong IP laws but they are not treated with enough importance. It is very difficult to convince the judiciary and the law enforcement officials to consider the Intellectual Property Rights issues on par with other economic offences.  

Plagiarism is one of the most common issues when it comes to Intellectual Property Rights issues. Plagiarism is copying someone else work and submitting it as yours without giving due respect to the original author. It includes ideas, inventions, slogans, articles, workshops and any proprietary information.

Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights can also be done through trademark counterfeit or copyright piracy. For instance, selling of duplicate medicines with the logo of a trusted brand may cause health issues. For these reasons, IPR laws should be given due diligence.

In the era of digitalisation, where it’s very easy to copy the stuff from any online source it has become a huge problem for the implementation of Intellectual Property Rights there. Online published papers are very susceptible to piracy on the internet. It is quite difficult to monitor all the cases of infringement od IPR laws on the internet and then to bring perpetrators to justice.