Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata
Maxine Hong Kingston once quoted, “In the time of destruction, create something” and to create is the motto of most intellectual minds. There wouldn’t have been civilizations dawning out of nowhere if the human minds were at rest and wouldn’t have thought to do something “out of the box”. But what if these creators don’t get the respect or rights that they deserve? To combat such dishonest practice, the World Intellectual Property Organization was formed as early as the late 1800s (at Paris and Berne), and the World Intellectual Property organization convention was signed on 14th of July 1967 (at Stockholm) and came into existence from 26th of April 1970. To celebrate and respect the convention and its purpose, the 26th of April is celebrated worldwide as “Intellectual Property Day” since the year 2000.
Now, what really is an intellectual property? Well, it is an honour given to creators of art, music, scientific research, or even to business logos and brands in order to give them the exclusive right to mange their own creations and anybody stealing or using it without legal permission of the owner is held guilty in the eyes of law. It is mainly of 4 types: copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. While trademarks and trade secrets mainly deal with protecting economic deals or brands and businesses, we as science enthusiasts are more interested in studying about copyrights and patents. Copyrights are of different forms including a great number of things within it. It basically refers to protecting written works like literature writing or even scientific paper works. An author of a paper needs to sign up for copyright before any article gets published, in order to establish themselves as the exclusive owners of the text and anything learnt from it thus needs to be acknowledged through referencing the original work. This right came into existence after the Copyright Act 1911. A patent on the other hand gives exclusive rights to an inventor and his heirs and assigned individuals to exploit the invention or to even hold the rights to sell or give license to someone else to use it for a time being. The patent right dates back to 1421 giving right of inventory to Filippo Brunelleschi.
All the creations marked as IPs should be original and unique and the moment someone claims it to be copied or fraud within a stipulated time, a set of procedures are followed to learn the truth thus saving the rights of the original creator/creators. These laws are thus very crucial for the honest progress of creativity around the globe. WIPO is working hard for preserving the creations; it has thus come up with the idea of free audiobooks (in collaboration with local libraries) for the blind or visually impaired individuals, so that the greatness of minds never fails to reach people in anyway. While such good news come into play every day, let us also take an oath to protect the hardworks of the scientists and researchers over the globe so that no creator ever faces problems in publishing unique work or by being harassed with duplicates and dishonest workers; an oath for a better tomorrow where science will fight and win over every prejudice.
Also read: Investigation of eDNA Genomics of Bear Fossils
Source:
- https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/convention/
- https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2021/article_0004.html#:~:text=In%202000%2C%20WIPO’s%20member%20states,of%20intellectual%20property%20(IP).
- https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
- https://www.accessiblebooksconsortium.org/news/en/2021/news_0006.html
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