Ajay Ba­ball

Stu­dent, Hugh Wood­ing Law School

We hear about "hu­man rights" reg­u­lar­ly and we seem to know a cou­ple of them. The right to life; the right to lib­er­ty; the right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion.But what about a per­son's in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights? Are those rights re­al­ly "hu­man rights?"

Hu­man rights are those rights which you pos­sess by virtue of be­ing hu­man, born free and equal in dig­ni­ty.

In­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights are the rights giv­en to peo­ple over the cre­ations of their minds. They usu­al­ly give the cre­ator an ex­clu­sive right over the use of his/her cre­ation for a cer­tain pe­ri­od of time.Still not sure if in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty ('IP') rights are "hu­man rights?"

Well Ar­ti­cle 27 of the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights pro­vides that: "(1) Every­one has the right freely to par­tic­i­pate in the cul­tur­al life of the com­mu­ni­ty, to en­joy the arts and to share in the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vance­ment and its ben­e­fits; and (2) Every­one has the right to the pro­tec­tion of the moral and ma­te­r­i­al in­ter­ests re­sult­ing from any sci­en­tif­ic, lit­er­ary or artis­tic pro­tec­tion of which he is the au­thor."

Now that we know that IP rights are hu­man rights too, how do we pro­tect them?There are var­i­ous types of IP rights. For in­stance, a copy­right al­lows its hold­er/orig­i­na­tor to have the ex­clu­sive and as­sign­a­ble le­gal right for a fixed num­ber of years, to print, pub­lish, film, or record lit­er­ary, artis­tic or mu­si­cal ma­te­r­i­al.

A month ago, there was a pub­li­cised feud on so­cial me­dia when an in­ter­na­tion­al artiste al­leged­ly used a lo­cal pho­tog­ra­ph­er's work with­out per­mis­sion or cred­it be­ing giv­en. A pub­lic up­roar en­sued, "there must be some vi­o­la­tion of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er's rights?!"...

Trinidad and To­ba­go's In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice states that "Copy­right is es­sen­tial to hu­man cre­ativ­i­ty. It gives cre­ators in­cen­tives in the form of recog­ni­tion and fair eco­nom­ic re­wards. Cre­ators can be as­sured that their works can be dis­sem­i­nat­ed with­out fear or unau­tho­rised copy­ing. This will help in­crease ac­cess to and en­hance the en­joy­ment of our cul­ture, knowl­edge and en­ter­tain­ment all over the world."

What about a per­son's moral rights? The World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WIPO) says that moral rights to a work not on­ly be­long to its au­thor, but moral rights al­low the au­thor to take cer­tain ac­tions to pre­serve the per­son­al link be­tween him­self and the work. In fact, the Berne Con­ven­tion recog­nis­es moral rights as hav­ing un­der­ly­ing rights, name­ly: the right to pa­ter­ni­ty and the right to in­tegri­ty.

The right to pa­ter­ni­ty is that right which al­lows an au­thor to claim au­thor­ship of his work.The right to in­tegri­ty af­fords an au­thor the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­ject to any dis­tor­tion or mod­i­fi­ca­tion of his work among oth­er things.So do you have any oth­er in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights avail­able to you be­sides copy­right?

Of course! There are patents, in­dus­tri­al de­signs and trade­marks among oth­ers.A patent is an ex­clu­sive right grant­ed for an in­ven­tion. A trade­mark is a sign ca­pa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing the good and ser­vices of one en­ter­prise from those of oth­er en­ter­pris­es. An in­dus­tri­al de­sign con­sti­tutes the or­na­men­tal or aes­thet­ic as­pect of an ar­ti­cle.

So what's your take away from this ar­ti­cle? You can be as­sured that you too have in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights as one of your hu­man rights. So get cre­at­ing and don't sleep on your rights!

This col­umn is not le­gal ad­vice. If you have a le­gal prob­lem, you should con­sult a le­gal ad­vis­er.