International-Business-Dr-R-Chandran-E-book

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International Business- Dr. R. Chandran
an examination. Once any objections raised are dealt with, the application
can proceed to grant the patent. Once the patent has been granted, it remains
in force for 20 years, subject to payment of annual renewal fees to keep the
patent in force, and a granted patent provides a patentee with an absolute
legal monopoly which can be used to prevent unauthorized use of the
patented invention.
Generally speaking, patents are territorial and it is necessary to obtain a
patent in each country in which protection is required. A patent in a
particular country does, however enable a patentee to prevent importation
into that country of an infringing product from wherever that importation
takes place. Therefore, it is common for patentees to protect their inventions
in the countries which constitute either their major markets, or which contain
their major competitors’ manufacturing sites. Whilst patents are essentially
territorial, there are a number of international conventions that make the
process of applying for international patent protection more simple and cost
effective than filing a national patent application in all the countries of
interest. The most important these international conventions are the
European patent Convention and the patent Cooperation Treaty.
Trademarks
Traditionally trademarks were any word or logo that serves to designate the
origin of goods or services. In recent years the law has come to recognize
that there are many other ways of designating the origin of goods or
services, e.g. advertising jingles, smells and the shape of goods or
packaging. Nowadays, therefore, these are also recognized as trademarks.
For registration, a trademark must be capable of distinguishing the
goods or services of one party from those of other parties. Furthermore,
trademarks that consist of anything other than words or logos must be
capable of being represented graphically. Any sign that does not satisfy
these requirements cannot be registered as a trademark. Signs which are
inherently non – distinctive or descriptive or which consist of words or
symbols, things that traders in the same area of business may wish
legitimately to use to identify the origin of their gods may be excluded from
registration. For example surnames and geographical locations would not be
allowed as trademarks.
In some countries, for example the United Kingdom, rights can be
obtained on a trademark simply by using a symbol or sign extensively
enough, so that it is identified with the product. In these circumstances, the
person or company using the trademark has legal resources through an
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