Keynotes

Speaker 1

Prof. Abdul-Muneim Zamzam

Professor of Private International Law - Faculty of Law/ Cairo University

Email:  amzamzam@cu.edu.eg

Title: The Role of the World Trade Organization in Protecting Intellectual Property Rights

​​​​​​​

In the current time, Intellectual property and the rights arising from it constitute the most important pillars of international trade and the core of economic competition. Therefore, the task of protecting it is no longer limited to national legislation and national authorities in each country. Rather, the scope of its protection has expanded to include international organizations and global entities, so international conventions came to regulate the protection of property Intellectual rights and settling disputes in this context, such as treaties of the world WIPO Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as it is a specialized organization in the field of intellectual property protection. In addition, the agreement on trade- related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), organized by the world trade organization. This agreement is concerned with the protection of intellectual property rights in terms of its scope, content, means of the protection and disputes’ settlement through the international arbitration. So that, the world trade organization has significant role in setting the mechanisms for enforcement of the agreement’s texts and the means of arbitration and the procedures for settling disputes. It aims to protect and implement intellectual property rights laws order to promote innovation, and circulate of technology and the knowledge, in a way which achieves the common benefits of producers and users of knowledge and innovation, and to perform the social and economic well-being, and the balance between rights and duties.

​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​

Speaker 2

Prof Sabri Hamad Khater

Professor of Civil Law

Dean of the College of Law - University of Bahrain (Formerly)

The Supreme Court lawyer in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Email: sabri_khater@yahoo.com

Title: The Balance between the Two Rights Related to the Industrial Property

             Intellectual property consisted of several rights distributed in different legislation. To regulate these rights in one code, it was necessary to find an active standard. The standard of protection was adapted for the national laws. When intellectual property appeared in the international field, the standard was considered insufficient. Some countries found the standard of protection is a means in the hand of the first developed countries to protect their interests to the detriment of other interests. This reality appears in studying the history or in the negotiation of the Trips agreement. This agreement administrated by World Trade Organization (WTO), and it was concluded to achieve the counterbalance of interests. However, after this agreement the conflict of interest became great, for instance COVID-19 vaccine. The need for the vaccine necessitates every state can obtain it but the intellectual property gives an exclusive right to the creative companies who developed the vaccine. Hence, the study of these kinds of problems is extraordinarily important. Nevertheless, access to medicines is one of the human rights that ensured by World Health Organization (WHO) who established a law on 18th of May 2002 entitled “ensuring accessibility to essential medicines”. According to this, example appears many important factors are as follows:

1. There is a public interest demand for the accessibility to intellectual and industrial rights.
2. Public accessibility leads to prevent creative companies from achieving their purpose of investments and this means the existence of many obstacles in the process of industrial development.

For these reasons, the conference on the industrial property is important since it is going to provide solutions to problems related to the confrontation between exclusive rights and public interests. The research must be taken in the direction of the practical solutions which may be as follows: 

1. Collaborating with legislators to make a balance between the right of the creator and the public interest.
2. Making specific studies on the basic or the practical problems.
3. Achieving a project of rules that can be suitable to be adopted by the legislator.

Speaker 3

Prof. Dr. Ghazi Faisal Mahdi

‎ Professor of Administrative Law, College of Law, Al-Nahrain University (Formerly)- Retired

Legal Adviser to the Legislation Department in the Iraqi Parliament

Email: prof.faisal@uofallujah.edu.iq

​​​​​​​Judiciary Authority in Resolving Intellectual Property Disputes: Ordinary and Administrative Judiciaries

 There is no doubt that intellectual property is a modern kind of property whose divisions have diversified and flourished as a result of contemporary developments in the field of science. Consequently, the laws which regulate this issue have become inadequate to provide the legal protection to it against the increased violations in the current time. So that, this situation requires to review the relevant laws, and increasing the safeguards to protect it, beside the existence of a specialized judiciary in these disputes that provides protection to the owners of this kind of property and prevents any violation, in order to allow them to invest their efforts in the optimal way and contribute in the field of creativity and invention for serving their communities, and this is not far from achievement.