INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS IN INDIA
VIVEK VASHISTH
As we all know the importance of intellectual properties in our country. Before going in depth of the condition of intellectual property in India let us understand the intellectual property. Intellectual property is that kind of property which is intangible in nature an it is created by the human efforts i.e. it is the creation of a human only. In simple words we can say that it is an intangible creation by human through their intellectual skills in the ways of music, writing etc.
We have gone through the basic meaning of intellectual property now we will go through the types and the intellectual property in India. There are many types of intellectual property in the world and every country in the world give different preferences to the intellectual property in their countries. In India the human creation has been is classified mainly under three heads that are PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS there are more but these three are the main intellectual property source in our country.
Patents means the protection of a particular invention done by a human and he don’t want it to be get copied without the permission. For instance, as we can see that in the current pandemic of coronavirus GLENMARK a pharmaceutical company had claimed that they had made an antiviral drug for coronavirus named as ‘Favipiravir’ so here they have the patent of this invention that no one can make, sell or use it without their permission. The patents in our country has been protected by THE PATENTS ACT which was enacted in 1970. The main objective of The Patents Act is to protect the essential elements of any new inventions whether it is the new invention for manufacture or any new invention of product.
Copyrights means protecting an author’s work by legal ways author’s work may include writing of any poetry, composition of lyrics for any song, writing a book etc. it says that the author has the right to publish the work in the market for the society and no other person can take this from him. For instance, if there is an author and he had written a book so in this case the author has the right for the publication of that book and to set the price of that book. The copyrights in our country has been protected by THE COPYRIGHTS ACT which was enacted in 1957. The main objective of The Copyrights Act is to protect all the works of the humans that requires authorship for the same.
Trademark is an intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign or expression which identifies the products of a particular source than others. Basically, it is a legal registration used as a symbol by a company that these belongs to the particular company only. For instance, we can see the symbol of adidas company the three tilted lines and adidas is written below those lines that symbol is the registered trademark of adidas and on every product they put their trademark and to check whether the trademark is registered there is a (®) like symbol at the last of adidas this symbol shows that this trademark is legally registered and no other can copy this trademark. The trademarks in our country has been protected by THE TRADEMARKS AND MERCHANDISE ACT which was enacted in 1985. Further, it was enacted and changed to THE TRADEMARKS ACT which was amended in 1999 and till now the trademarks are covered under this act only. The main motive or objective of this act is to protect the particular symbol, logo of a company which represents the status of that company.
So, the above given data is about some of the intellectual property and their laws under which they are governed in India.
