Protection of Intellectual Property (IP) Rights can be obtained, on the one hand, into industrial property rights, as
- Patents and utility models,
- Trademarks,
- Designs,
- Plant variety rights
- Topography rights for semiconductors
wherein patents, utility models, plant variety and topography rights represent technical IP rights, whereas trademarks and designs represent non-technical IP rights. Creations, on the other hand, are protected by copyrights.
Just like Property Law, the so-called intangible property grants its owner an absolute right which allows him to prohibit third parties any kind of use of the subject-matter of his absolute right. Also in analogy to the transfer of property, intangible rights are also transferrable. Only as far as the IP right concerned is a personal right, as the personal right of the creator or the personal right of the inventor, the latter in fact is not transferrable. In contrast to Property Law, however, IP rights in most cases are subject to a temporal restriction.
Because there exists a plurality of various kinds of intangible rights, the latter can be subject to protection according to several different kinds of IP rights. .
