Why Swiss Jurisdiction
Hosting of the domain and the entire IT platform, as well as the jurisdiction of the User Agreement with clients fall under the jurisdiction of the Swiss Confederation. Therefore, in all legal matters, the relations of the IT Platform Administration with clients, clients among themselves and with third parties regarding the materials posted on the IT platform are subject to the legislation of the Swiss Confederation in general and intellectual property norms in particular.
Advantages of Swiss jurisdiction in intellectual property matters
For decades, the jurisdiction of the Swiss Confederation has been preferred for international judicial and arbitration proceedings. Switzerland consistently occupies the first lines of the most frequently chosen places of arbitration and international courts, which is associated with a two-hundred-year history of neutrality, a stable political system and the highest reputation of the judicial system. In particular, the World Intellectual Property Organization Center for Arbitration and Mediation in Geneva was established in 1994 to resolve international commercial disputes in the field of intellectual property.
Copyright and patent law — the main differences
A comparative analysis of copyright and patent law reveals the following differences: the exclusive right belongs to the author in copyright from the moment of creation of the work, and in patent law — from the date of receipt of the patent; due to the specifics of the objects subject to legal protection, the scope of the authors’ rights in copyright is greater; the main way to protect the rights of the author in patent law is a patent (patent protection). And in copyright, there is a procedure for depositing works in commercial registers of works, which allows protecting the priority of copyright.
Copyright and patent law are included in the general concept of intellectual property law. Consequently, in general, they are subject to general legal laws. However, due to the difference in the objects of legal protection, there are significant differences between them. They mainly concern the procedure for the emergence of authors’ rights and the available ways to protect such rights.
Copyright
Copyright is an institution of civil law that regulates legal relations related to the creation and use of works of science, literature and art. Computer programs and databases also belong to the objects of copyright, as they are equated to literary works and collections, respectively. Also, the complex of legal relations regulated by copyright should include the disposal of the exclusive right to a work — license agreements, agreements on the alienation of rights.
Patent law
Patent law is an institution of civil law regulating legal relations related to the creation, use and sale of industrial property objects, namely: inventions, industrial designs, utility models, know-how and trademarks.
The exclusive right to these objects belongs to the author or a third party, and is also protected by law, only in the case of state registration — namely, obtaining a patent in accordance with the procedure established by the state and international treaties.
A patent is a security document (patent protection), which is issued on behalf of the state to a natural or legal person who has submitted an application for obtaining to confirm their rights to an object of industrial property. The patent certifies:
priority of the object of patent law specified in the application;
authorship of the individual specified in the application;
exclusive right to the intellectual property object specified in the application.
Obtaining a patent is preceded by an examination conducted by the relevant state bodies.
Objects and subjects of copyright
The objects of copyright include works of science, literature and art, regardless of the mode of expression, dignity (value) and purpose. For example, it can be books, music, paintings, computer programs and much more. Thus, everything that is created by the creative work of an individual and fits the concept of “work” can be attributed to the objects of copyright.
Copyright subjects may be authors of works of literature, science, art, computer programs and databases, as well as copyright holders who, by virtue of a contract or law, have obtained exclusive rights to a specific intellectual property object. The author is an individual whose intellectual work directly created the work. If the work was created by several persons, then they are recognized as co-authors.
The authors’ rights are divided into property and personal non-property rights. Personal non-property (non-exclusive) rights are inalienable, as they are directly related to the author’s name. The exclusive right to the work is proprietary, material, for this reason, the author can dispose of it. Namely, to transfer to another person or persons under a license agreement — in fact, to lease — or to conclude an agreement on the alienation of exclusive rights — in fact, to conclude a contract of “purchase and sale”. If this happens, copyright holders arise — that is, persons who are not authors, but have exclusive rights to the work.
The possibility of disposing of the exclusive right to a work from the above-mentioned persons directly depends on the method and format of the transfer of this right to them.
Objects and subjects of patent law
The objects of patent law should be understood as the results of intellectual labor of an individual or a group of individuals that can be used in industry, that is, for the production of something that has a material component. These should include inventions, utility models, industrial designs, know-how, trademarks. Collectively, all these objects are referred to as industrial property. To be recognized as objects of patent law, they must meet the conditions of patentability. Namely:
invention — novelty, inventive level, industrial applicability;
utility model — novelty, industrial applicability;
industrial design — novelty, originality;
know-how — novelty, originality;
trademark — novelty, originality.
If the object specified in the patent application meets all the conditions of patentability, then the patent examination will be completed by a decision to grant a patent.
The subjects of patent law — authors — are recognized as individuals whose creative work created the object of patent law, that is, the object of industrial property. If such creative activity was carried out jointly, then the individuals participating in it are recognized as co-authors.
But in the case of patent law, unlike copyright, to become a full-fledged subject of it, that is, to acquire not only non-exclusive, but also the exclusive right to an object of intellectual property, can not be any individual who came up with something, but only the patent holder, the patent holder.
In case of a positive decision of the expert commission, the above-mentioned persons become patent holders, that is, full subjects of patent law.
Authors’ rights in copyright and patent law
The rights of authors in copyright and patent law are divided into property and non-property. They partially coincide in content, but there are also differences that are worth paying attention to.
The author of the work in copyright initially, from the moment of creation of the object of intellectual property, without mandatory registration of copyrights, owns the entire complex of copyrights. Namely:
exclusive rights to the work;
the right of authorship;
the author’s right to the name;
the right to inviolability of the work;
the right to publish the work.
The exclusive right may be alienated to third parties from the moment of its occurrence, that is, the date of creation of the work.
The author of an industrial property object also owns a set of exclusive and non-exclusive rights. Namely:
the exclusive right that the author acquires only if he has a patent;
the right to file an application for a patent may be alienated by the author in favor of a third party or initially belong to a third party by virtue of a contract or law;
the right of authorship, that is, the right to be recognized as the author of an object of industrial property, and the author’s right to a name, this right is personal non-property and, as a consequence, inalienable.
Thus, there are the following differences between the rights of authors in copyright and patent law:
the exclusive right in copyright belongs to the author upon creation of the work, and in patent law — upon receipt of the patent;
the set of rights in copyright is broader than in patent law, since it additionally includes the right to inviolability of the work and the right to its publication.
Differences in the protectability of objects of copyright and patent law.
The regimes of legal protection of copyrights in copyright and patent law are similar, but, nevertheless, not identical.
In both cases, intellectual property rights may be transferred to third parties under license agreements or assignment agreements. But in copyright, the author disposes of the exclusive right to the work from the moment of its creation and can transfer one of the above methods both for remuneration and free of charge. And in patent law, the author acquires the exclusive right to the object of his intellectual activity from the moment of receipt of the patent and can transfer the right to it only on a reimbursable basis.
In order to retain the exclusive right, the author in patent law must maintain the patent in its current state, that is, regularly pay fees. Copyright does not provide for such a “design”.
Protection of the author’s rights in copyright and patent law
The mechanisms of copyright protection in copyright and patent law are essentially identical, since we are talking about the protection of intellectual property objects in general. In both cases, the methods of copyright protection are divided into judicial and non-judicial. The main difference is that the patent holder, the author in the context of patent law, has a patent protection document, and the author does not have such an “iron” method of protection in copyright, except for the authors of computer programs and databases, who can also apply for a patent.
The judicial method of copyright protection consists in the fact that authors in both areas of law can apply to the court for protection of their rights.
There are several out-of-court ways to protect copyrights. The main ones are notarization and deposit of a work or an object of industrial property. Both methods are united by the fact that the applicant must have a material object to present. That is, in the case of copyright, we are talking about the expression of a work in a material form, for example, the text of a book. In the case of patent law, the material expression is usually already there, but it is difficult to notarize or deposit, for example, an invented machine. Therefore, the applicant must have documentation, personal records, descriptions or some other object with which it will be possible to identify the object of industrial property.
For authors in patent law, these methods, especially depositing, are very relevant in the time interval between the creation of an object of patent law and obtaining a patent for it. That is, until he has patent protection.
Thus, the difference in the possibilities of protecting the author’s rights in copyright and patent law is that the patent itself is a security document and proof of authorship, and copyright does not provide anything like that.
Conclusion
Comparative analysis of copyright and patent law reveals the following differences:
fundamentally different objects of legal protection;
the exclusive right belongs to the author in copyright from the moment of creation of the work, and in patent law — from the date of receipt of the patent;
due to the specifics of the objects subject to legal protection, the scope of authors’ rights in copyright is greater;
patent law does not provide for the gratuitous realization or other form of disposal of the exclusive right;
the main way to protect the author’s rights in patent law is a patent (patent protection), which also proves the right of authorship itself. And there is no similar method in copyright, but there is a procedure for depositing works in commercial registers of works, which allows protecting the priority of copyright.