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Legal Protection: WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) |
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Presumably the major player in the field of international  intellectual property protection and administrator of various multilateral treaties dealing with the legal and administrative aspects of intellectual property is the WIPO.
Information on WIPO administered agreements in the field of industrial property (Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883), Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (1891) etc.) can be found on:  http://www.wipo.org/eng/general/index3.htm
Information on treaties concerning copyright and neighboring rights (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) etc.) is published on: http://www.wipo.org/eng/general/index5.htm
The most recent multilateral agreement on copyright is the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. Among other things it provides that computer programs are protected as literary works and also introduces the protection of databases, which "... by reason of the selection or arrangement of their content constitute intellectual creations." Furthermore the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty contains provisions concerning technological measures, rights management information and establishes a new "right of communication to the public". It is available on: http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/treaty01.htm
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Invention
According to the WIPO an invention is a "... novel idea which permits in practice the solution of a specific problem in the field of technology." Concerning its protection by law the idea "... must be new in the sense that is has not already been published or publicly used; it must be non-obvious in the sense that it would not have occurred to any specialist in the particular industrial field, had such a specialist been asked to find a solution to the particular problem; and it must be capable of industrial application in the sense that it can be industrially manufactured or used." Protection can be obtained through a patent (granted by a government office) and typically is limited to 20 years.
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