Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris, France, on 20 March 1883, was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a Union for the protection of industrial property. The Convention is currently still in force. The substantive provisions of the Convention fall into three main categories: national treatment, priority right and common rules. National treatment According to Articles 2 and 3 of this treaty, juristic and natural persons who are either national of or domiciled in a state party to the Convention shall, as regards the protection of industrial property, enjoy in all the other countries of the Union, the advantages that their respective laws grant to nationals. In other words, when an applicant files an application for a patent or a trademark in a foreign country member of the Union, the application receives the same treatment as if it came from a national of this foreign country. Furthermore, if the intellectual property right is granted (e.g. if the applicant becomes owners of a patent or of a registered trademark), the owner benefits from the same protection and the same legal remedy against any infringement as if the owner was a national owner of this right. Priority right The "Convention priority right", also called "Paris Convention priority right" or "Union priority right", was also established by Article 4 of the Paris Convention, and is regarded as one of the cornerstones of the Paris Convention. It provides that an applicant from one contracting State shall be able to use its first filing date (in one of the contracting States) as the effective filing date in another contracting State, provided that the applicant, or his successor in title, files a subsequent application within 6 months (for industrial designs and trademarks) or 12 months (for patents and utility models) from the first filing. Temporary protection for goods shown at some international exhibitions
Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. Background After a diplomatic conference in Paris administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1880, Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property was signed by 11 countries, which are Belgium, Brazil, France, Guatemala, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, El Salvador, Serbia, Spain, and Switzerland in 1883 at a simi- lar conference with additional Final Protocol. The convention governs almost all international reciprocal patent filing rights. The treaty was later then revised at Brussels, Belgium, on 14 December 1900; at Wash- ington, United States on 2 June 1911; at The Hague, Netherlands, on 6 November 1925; at London, United Kingdom, on 2 June 1934; at Lis- bon, Portugal, on 31 October 1958; and at Stockholm, Sweden, on 14 July 1967 and was amended on 28 September 1979. These States had ratified the Convention in 1884. Up until now, there are approximately 169 countries that are parties to the Convention.
Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. This Agreement is applicable to the protection of Industrial Property in its broadest sense since it includes, among others, inventions, trademarks, trade names, industrial designs, utility models, geographical indications and repression of unfair competition.
