Intellectual property rights are legal rights granted to persons in order to protect their intellectual creations such as literary and artistic works, industrial designs, inventions, etc. Such rights encourage innovation and give a sense of legal security to the innovator for a fixed period of time in the form of patents, copyright, design rights, trademark, etc.
a. Copyright – is a form of intellectual property, applicable to certain form of creative work. Copyright infringement leads to monetary loss for the creator. However, copyright infringement is a regular occurrence, especially in software, music, films, books, etc.
b. Patents - are monopoly rights granted by the government to an inventor for a new an ingenious invention which has industrial applicability. Only the inventor has the right to make, sell, use, import or offer to sell the invention for a period of 20 years from the date of filing for the patent, provided the annual patent renewal fees are paid.
c. Trademark (or brand name) – is the distinct design, slogan, sign, etc. of an organization or product which distinguishes it from other organizations or products. It serves as an identity, guarantees consistency in quality, creates an image and serves as an advertisement.
d. Design Rights - are intellectual property rights which protect the designs of objects that are not purely utilitarian.
PIRACY
The original meaning of the word 'piracy' is 'the act of attacking and stealing from ships at sea'. However, in the business context, piracy, also known as 'plagiarism' means 'unauthorized use or reproduction of another person's work'. Today piracy has become a business that is taking over other business. The most common area of piracy are books, music, films and software.
Illegal commercial photocopying, digitization and reproducing large tracts from a book without giving the author credit amounts to book piracy. Downloading movies, music from torrents is a form of online piracy.
Piracy amounts to theft of intellectual property rights. Piracy affects royalty earnings, results in loss for investors and even generates black money which creates a dent in the tax revenue of the government.
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