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Intellectual property rights

A category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Types of Intellectual Property

  • Copyright

    Copyright regulates relations arising in connection with the creation and use of works of science, literature and art. The basis of copyright is the concept of "work", meaning the original result of creative activity, existing in some objective form. It is this objective form of expression that is the subject of protection in copyright. Copyright does not extend to ideas, methods, processes, systems, methods, concepts, principles, discoveries, facts.

  • Related rights

    The most common examples are the exclusive rights of performing musicians, producers of phonograms, broadcasting organizations. The content of related rights varies significantly in different countries.

  • Patent law

    Patent law is a system of legal norms that determine the procedure for protecting inventions, utility models, industrial designs (often these three objects are combined under a single name - "industrial property") and selection achievements by issuing patents.

  • Rights to means of individualization

    Includes such concepts as: trademark, company name, name of the place of origin of goods and domain name. For the first time, legal norms on the protection of means of individualization at the international level were enshrined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, where a larger part of the convention is devoted to trademarks than to inventions and industrial designs.

  • Right to production secrets (know-how)

    Production secrets (know-how) are information of any nature (original technologies, knowledge, skills, etc.) that are protected by the trade secret regime and can be the subject of purchase and sale or used to achieve a competitive advantage over other business entities.
    A trade secret is a form of intellectual property (IP) comprising confidential information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, derives economic value from its secrecy, and is protected by reasonable efforts to maintain its confidentiality. Well-known example is the Coca-Cola formula.

  • Rights to new plant varieties

    A system of legal norms that regulate the copyrights of breeders to new plant varieties (breeding achievements) by issuing patents.

The State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI) of Republic of Moldova is a central administrative authority subordinated to the Government, responsible for promoting and implementing activities in the field of legal protection of intellectual property related to industrial property rights, copyright and related rights.

Legal basis of the Republic of Moldova

Legal basis of EU and international

  • DIRECTIVE 2004/48/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (Text with EEA relevance)
    Corrigendum to Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights
  • Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012 on quality schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs
  • Commission regulation (EC) No 607/2009 of 14 July 2009 laying down certain detailed rules for the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 479/2008 as regards protected designations of origin and geographical indications, traditional terms, labelling and presentation of certain wine sector products

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