Intellectual Property Right

Intellectual property rights are the rights given to the person to protect their creation of their mind such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs and symbols, names and images used in business. Intellectual property rights authorizes to establish creator’s right to reject other from exploiting the economic value of his/her invention or artistic expressions, limitations are enforced on those rights for the purpose of domestic economic and social policy, and enforcement of the rights (Maskus, 2000).

Many companies spend millions of dollars on establishing brand names by spending money on research to develop their products process, designs and formulas that provide advantage to their companies over their competitors. Intellectual properties are the most valuable assets of the company and companies should be able to protect the intellectual properties. Failure in the protection of the intellectual property leads company to the loss and bad image in the market. The Marlboro brand had a value of $33 billion, Kellogg’s $9 billion, Microsoft $9.8 billion, and Levi’s $5 billion; all have experienced infringement of their intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights can be legally protected to prevent other companies from infringing on such assets (Cateora, Gilly, & Graham, 1012).

For example, the name “Harry Potter” is registered as a community trade mark the European Union for a range of goods and services in classes 9, 16, 20, 21, 25 and 28 under CTM registration number 935593 since 9 September 1998. So, no one has right to make movie by using that name “Harry Potter” (Lambert, 2012).

References

Cateora, P. R., Gilly, M. C., & Graham, J. L. (1012). International Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Lambert, J. (2012). Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights: A Concise Guide for Businesses, Innovative and Creative Individuals. Farnham Surrey, England: Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Maskus, K. E. (2000). Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy. washington, DC: Peterson Institute.