Intellectual Property

Intellectual property rights protect inventions, trademarks, creativity and resourcefulness. Intellectual property is comprehended as covering two categories, in particular:

• industrial property, where the owner is granted monopolistic rights to technical or aesthetic inventions as well as exclusive marks. It bears relation with patents of inventions, design, industrial objects’ samples and references of the place of origin or names;
• copyright, which is also referred to as the rights owned by writers or artists, protects not only works of literature or art but also music, TV shows, software, data bases, advertising and multimedia.

Intellectual property rights are protected by a number of conventions initiated by two major organizations: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and World Trade Organization (WTO). Commitments undertaken by the major part of EU Member States have been given a standardized form in the national provisions on intellectual property protection. Nonetheless, this comprises insufficient effort in order to complete the common European market. Therefore, a decision was taken in the EU to align national legislation regulating the said area.

The EU not only exerts every effort to harmonize fundamental laws regulating intellectual property but also establish equal rights at Community level (Community trade marks, Community design or models, Community would-be patents) thus aiming at simplifying and centralizing the intellectual property protection system. The substantive advantage of such equal rights would manifest itself as a single registration procedure, due to which all-Community equal protection of intellectual property can be ensured. For this reason the Office for Harmonization for the Internal Market (OHIM) located in Alicante, Spain, registers Community trade marks and Community designs. The European Patent Office in Munich is planned to be in charge of granting of Community future patents.

Data about European patents valid in the Republic of Lithuania are available on the web site of the State Patent Bureau.