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   Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 9(1):24-28 

 

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Basic Concept of Intellectual property Rights (IPRs) 

 

Arif Hossain  

MBGPH (USA), PhD (USA)  
Professor & Course Co-Ordinator, Etrat University, Iran. 
Founding Chairman & Vice President, Bangladesh Bioethics Society, Email: ahossainbbs@yahoo.com   

 

Abstract: Intellectual property Rights (IPRs) is protected by different systems of laws. Journals must 

choose a definitive form of systems. Some Blackwell journals use copyright system and some Blackwell 

use license from authors. Now a days online journals are using creative common licenses.  Under creative 

common license journals are open access, allowed to download, copy, distribute, and display derivative 

works with proper attribution to author or owner for noncommercial purpose at a free cost. Education on 

IPRs will support to comprehend ones rights, professional code of conduct and the doctrine of "fair use" in 

publication. One cannot do anything with once writing. Researchers, academic, editors and readers must 

have the basic knowledge on who owns the rights in a publication and what users can do with the publication 

by law.  

 

Key words: IPRs, publication ethics, copy rights                     

 

Introduction: Journals are protected by 

intellectual property Rights (IPRs). Therefore, 

journals are required to implement a system of 

law of IPRs that is best ensembles their 

philosophy and purpose 1. Some Blackwell 

journals use copyright system where authors 

need to surrender their rights to publishers to 

reproduce and distribute for commercial purpose 

for a period of time 2. Other Blackwell journals use 

creative common license from authors, where 

authors permit to publishers to reproduce and 

distribution of their work at a free of cost if their 

work is properly cited. Most of the online open-

access journals are under creative commons 

licenses 1.  

 

According to Bethesda Statement, in Open 

Access Publishing system, all published works in 

open access journal are freely available to 

anyone; anyone can copy, distribute, and display 

the work at a free of cost for noncommercial 

purpose provided proper attribution to authors. 

Violate of copyright / license is illegal and 

subjected to imprisonment 2. 

 

Education on IPRs will assist anyone to 

understand professional code of conduct and 

their rights and prevent everybody from 

embarrassment. 

 

Definition: “Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are 

legal and institutional devices to protect creations 

of the mind” e.g. inventions or innovations 3. Any 

artistic works (music, art, video and literature), 

discoveries or inventions of symbols, designs, 

monogragraph, words, axioms, and expression 



   Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 9(1):24-28 

 

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are protected by IPRs4. Researchers or the 

inventors can get incentive in return of their 

investment of knowledge by IPRs through 

Patents, copyrights, trademarks etc. 5  

 

Copyrights is denoted as ©. Copy rights sign is 

followed by year and the name of the owner. 

Example: © 2011 John Doe. Creative Commons 

attribution is denoted as CC BY. e,g, CC BY 2011 

John Doe 2.  

 

“IPRs have been justified on basis of both 

consequentialist approach and rights-based 

grounds in order to appreciate their importance 

intellectual works in return of monetary benefit for 

sustainable economic growth and development 

of the global economy” 3. 

 

Classification of IPRs: IPRs can be classified in 

to patent, copy rights, license, trade mark, trade 

dress and trade secret. Non-material objective 

e.g. ideas, inventions and procedures are 

protected by patent law whereas material objects 

e.g. publications, literature, music, arts, film are 

protected by copyrights. The words, names or 

symbols are protected by trademark law and 

business information e.g. customer lists is 

protected by trade secret law 6.  

 

Patent: “A patent is a form of rights to an inventor 

granted by the government to gain material 

benefits from an invention for a limited period of 

time” 3. It provide protection to owner of invention 

not to exploit by other to copied, sale, use, offer 

for sale,  or import without authorization of the 

owner of the patent for 20 years of time 7.  

Although patent rights was evident in Sybaris, an 

ancient city of Greece but the first came in 

statutory as Venetian Patent Statute in Vanice in 

1450 to protect industrial innovation 4.  

 

First, an inventor need to apply provisional or 

short term patent giving the outline of the 

tentative invention at the concept stage to restrict 

other to use the innovation. Then they need to 

apply again to complete application within one 

year period from the date of the provisional 

application after completion of the work to claim 

the rights to the innovation. Work is scrutinized 

and approved upon final application8.    

 

Patent are three type e.g. utility patents, design 

patents and plant patents 9.  

 

Utility patent or rights: It is granted the rights of 

material benefits to the inventor for novel 

procedure or functionality of a product. Utility 

patent protects working of a machine even in 

improvement than previously designed product9.  

 

Design patent or rights:  It is the rights to inventors 

of material benefits who discover a new industrial 

design or product (e.g. shape, configuration or 

color, or two- or three-dimensional pattern, 

composition of pattern) 9.  

 

Plant Patent: It is the rights of material benefits of 

an inventors to discover some new variety of 

plant 9.   

 

Copyright: Copyright law protects the intellectual 

creation of original author of mass 

communication e.g. publication, literature, music, 



   Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 9(1):24-28 

 

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arts, film to prevent from other to reproduce/ 

distribute/ sale/ rental/ leasing/ lending in the form 

of copies, phonorecords to the public without 

authorization of original author 7.  

 

In case of journals, materials are copyrighted and 

have exclusive right to publisher to publish, 

modify, reproduce, distribute, or sell of those 

products. Traditionally publisher have the 

exclusive right on the material works.  Now a day, 

an authors are allowed ownership of their work. 

However, both cases authors need to transfer 

copyright to the publisher to publish and re-use 

the work 2. In “Open Access” journals, author 

approves distribution of his/her works without 

prior permission at a free of cost provided cited 

properly the name of original author(s). 

Unauthorized use of copyrighted work is 

infringement the copyright law. 

 

Doctrine of fair use: It is the exceptions to 

copyright infringement in case of nonprofit 

educational and research purposes2. As for 

example, a students may make a photocopy an 

article or book chapter for their own personal use 

without asking permission from original author or 

the results of an author may be described or 

some sentences from an article are inscribed in 

students writing with citation will be considered as 

“fair use” 10. Wide-range of text sentences with 

quotation from a copyrighted source can 

constitute copyright infringement.  According to 

American Psychological Association (APA), 

authors need prior permission to borrow more 

than 500 words of text from any APA journals 

article. So plagiarism is qualify as copyright 

infringement 10.  

 

Work for hire: When a work has been done within 

the opportunity of employment or commissioned 

for a specific project, the constructed work is 

belonged to the employer not for the writer 9. 

Therefore, in “works for hire”, employee is the 

author 2, e.g. “comedy writer of the David 

Letterman Show writes many jokes for the 

monologue. The jokes are the property of the 

employer, not for the comedy writer because they 

were written within the scope of the writer's 

employment. The writer does not own the 

copyright to those jokes” 9. In entertainment 

industries and ghostwriting arrangements in 

pharmaceutical companies the “work for hire” are 

very common.  In a freelance situation work for 

hire" are also seen when the authors are 

commissioned for a specific work, e.g. 

presidential speech, news of a newspaper etc6. 

 

Time: Date of the copyrights automatically start 

when the intellectual work is first fixed in a copy 

or phonorecord and ends till author’s death plus 

an additional 70 years after the author’s death. 

Copies are material objects e.g. books, articles, 

music, photograph, film, videotape, or microfilm. 

“Phonorecords” are cassette tapes, CDs, or vinyl 

disks 6. Duration of copyrights for "works for hire" 

last for 75 years from the date of first publication 

or 100 years from the date of creation6. 

 

License: Copyright says who "owns" the rights in 

a publication but the license says what users can 

do with the publication. License are two types e.g. 

a restricted or open license, Open Access (OA) 

license says that the article can be reused for any 



   Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 9(1):24-28 

 

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purpose without asking permission. Publisher 

can choose what license they want to publish. 

 

Trademarks: Trademark is a sign, which 

indicates the products of a specific trader and 

distinguishes from parallel products of other 

traders7.Trademarks was existed date back 

3,000 years ago, when Indian craftsmen exported 

their artistic product to Iran engraving with their 

signatures. It had only had the identity of the 

originator of the product but did not have 

economic importance in that time 7. However, 

with the growing of trade, the Paris Convention 

denotes a trademark by registration to distinguish 

the goods from their competitor’s goods. Over 

one hundred and fifty states are the signatory of 

the Paris Convention 7. 

Trade dress: Trade dress are the physical 

appearance, ‘packaging, trade policy, marketing 

techniques, advertisement themes” of a products 

to distinguish from other similar product that 

prevent the consumers from buying similar 

products4. For example, chocolate packet, 

magazine cover, chain of Mexican/ Chinese style 

restaurants. Similar appearance may cause the 

confusion to public and it is subject to 

infringement of trade dress4. 

 

Trade secrets: For economic growth of the 

business over competitors and customers 

sometimes formula or practice or information is 

kept secret from public is considered as trade 

secret. Trade secret is not protected by law, 

business shall have own methods to guard its 

own trade secrets e.g., Formula of Coca-Cola, 

KFC recipe etc 4. 

 

Difference between copyrights and patent: 7 

Patent  Copyrights 

Paten protects new and useful inventions  Copyright protects authorship of literary, musical 

and dramatic work. 

Patent are science-based protections Copyrights are arts based 

New, useful and non-obvious. Authorship must be original and real medium. 

Rights is not confer unless apply Copyright begins when work is created 

Patent provides protection for 10-20 years from the 

date of application. 

Copyright is issued to the author until his/her life 

plus 50-70 years. 

Patent is much difficult as the checking process of 

invention is lengthy and costly. 

A copyright is easy and less complicated. 

Conclusion: Intellectual property Rights (IPRs) 

are protected by different systems of law. Journal 

should choose one form of licensing system that 

are the greatest benefit for their purpose and 

ethos. Journals should have policy of IPRs to 

protect from plagiarism. This ethics education on 

IPRs will help to understand ones rights, codes of 

conduct in profession writing and the doctrine of 

fair use in publication. One cannot do anything 

with once writing. Research, academic, editors 



   Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 9(1):24-28 

 

28 

 

and readers must have the basic knowledge who 

owns the rights in a publication and what users 

can do with the publication by law to prevent 

embarrassment and harassment.  

 

Reference:  

1. Graf C, Wager E, Bowman A, Fiack S, Scott-Lichter 
D, Robinson A.. Best Practice Guidelines on 
Publication Ethics: a Publisher’s Perspective. Int J 
Clin Pract 2007, 61 (Suppl. 152): 1–26. 
 
2. U.S. Copyright Office · (2012). Copyright Basics. 
Library of Congress Washington, DC · 
www.copyright.gov (access on oct.2017) 

3. UNCTAD/ICTS. 2002. Intellectual Property Rights 
and Development – Policy Discussion Paper 
UNCTAD/ICTSD Capacity Building Project on 
Intellectual Property Rights and Sustainable 
Development.  

4. Wikipedia 2017 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property 
(access on Nov..2017) 

5. European Commission. 2017. Intellectual Property 
Rights Enforcement. 
http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/intellectual-
property-rights-enforcement  . 

6. White CE.1997 Basic Copyright Concepts for 
Writers 
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/sep97/basic-
copyright-concepts-for-writers-9973 (access on 
oct.2017) 

7. WIPO . 2008.  WIPO Intellectual Property 
Handbook:  Policy, Law and Use. Chapter 2 - Fields 
of Intellectual Property Protection. 
http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/about-
ip/en/iprm/pdf/ch2.pdf (access on oct.2017) 

8. Dutta R. 2017. Patent rights in India. 
https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=4995 (access on 
oct.2017) 

9. DiferenceBetween.com. 2010. Difference between 
Copyright and Patent. 
http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-
between-copyright-and-patent/ (access on Nov. 2017) 

 
10. Roig M 2003 Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, 
and other questionable writing practices: A guide to 
ethical writing, ORI, pp 1-63 
http://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/roig_st_johns/On
%20ethical%20writing.html (access on oct.2017). 

 

Author Contribution: The 1st author develop the 

idea and meticulously review the article and the 

2nd author execute the idea, drafting the article, 

precisely review the article. 

Conflict of Interest: Authors declare no conflict 

of interest between them. Research is done by 

self-finance. 

 


