Master Glossary
Access rights: licences and users rights to knowledge or pre-existing “know-how” owned by another person.
Biological material: any material containing genetic information and capable of reproducing itself or being reproduced in a biological system.
Biopiracy (or bioprospecting): appropriation, - generally by means of patents, -
of legal rights over indigenous biomedical knowledge without compensation to the indigenous groups who originally developed such knowledge. More generally defines the endeavor to capitalise on tribal knowledge of natural resources.
Commercialisation: the process of introducing a new product into the market.
Confidentiality clause: contractual clause obliging contractors to take necessary measures to ensure all information transmitted by partners in the course of the performance of their contractual duties remains confidential.
Confidentiality agreement: a contract outlining confidential information, materials, knowledge and/or trade secrets that contracting parties wish to share for defined purposes, but restrict from generalised use
Copyleft: a licensing system by which the licensor uses and licences his copyright on a work to allow anyone to use, modify or improve his work, on condition that any beneficiaries of this advantageous licence do the same with their own copyright on the modifications or improvements. “Copy-left” is meant to be antithesis of “Copy-right”. This is seen as a way of keeping works under control.
Copyright: a form of intellectual property that grants authors and artists the exclusive right to the reproduction, derivation, distribution, performance and display of their original woks, including literary, artistic, dramatic and musical works and computer programmes.
Counterfeiting: the act of producing or knowingly selling a product that contains an intentional, unauthorised reproduction of a trademark.
Creative Commons licenses: a contractual means to modulate types/quantity of rights to be transferred/withhold. These licences, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights (or none) of the work. Using modular licences that range from the strict Copyright approach (“all rights reserved”) and the public domain (“no rights reserved”), authors can choose under which legal model they wish to publish their works and can choose also an intermediate “some rights reserved” approach. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information. Thus, distribution and use of materials like translation and quoting licences will be stimulated under creative commons.
Cross- licence: contractual means which allows two or more owners of patents to share their licences, thus they may freely use one another’s inventions.
Disclaimer: a declaration that the applicant does not claim exclusive rights for part of a trademark.
Distinctness (relating to plant breeders’ rights): a plant variety can be classified as distinct as long as it is clearly distinguishable by reference to the expression of the characteristics that results from a particular genotype or combination of genotypes, from any other variety whose existence is part of the common knowledge at the time of application.
Exclusive right: an economic right allowing the author to completely control his/her right to authorise or to forbid a use covered by his right that nobody else can exercise.
Gene: a segment of DNA located in a specific site of a chromosome, which contains the necessary information to make a protein or an enzyme. It is a physical basis for the transmission of the characteristics of living organisms from one generation to another.
Genebank: a means of preserving genetic material, be it plant or animal, through freezing either cuts from the plant or seeds (for plants) or freezing of sperm and eggs (in animals).
Genome: the entire hereditary material contained in an organism or a cell.
Genotype: the total generic, or hereditary, constitution that an individual receives from its parents. The genotype determines the hereditary potentials and limitations of an individual organism.
Geographical indication: an indication which identifies a good as originating in a determined territory, or a region, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.
Global public good: public goods whose benefits reach across borders, generations and population groups.
Intellectual assets: is considered to be broader in scope and, in addition to the Intellectual Property, includes Trade Secrets
Human Capital: refers to a company’s “know-how” and capabilities embodied in its employees, in relation to the operation of its business. HC includes the collective experience, skills, creativity, and expertise of the staff. On an individual basis, it refers to the capability of the employee to perform specific tasks necessary to the operation of the business.
Infringement: a violation of an exclusive intellectual property right attached to the copyright, patent or trademark law, resulting in the unauthorised use of material protected by one of the above mentioned laws.
Intellectual property: covers two main areas: 1) industrial property, covering inventions, trade marks, industrial designs, and protected designations of origin, 2) copyright, represented by literary, musical, artistic, photographic ad audio-visual works.
Intellectual capital: collectively, “Human Capital”, “Intellectual Assets” including the “Intellectual Property” component, are known as “Intellectual Capital”.
Invention: every new and useful machine, article, process or any new use of the same that is described and/or claimed in a patent or patent application.
Joint ownership: a situation in which two or more people share ownership of goods or rights. The scope of rights of each owner depends on the type of intellectual property right (copyright, patents) and on the applicable law, unless the joint owners have made a contract governing their relation to each other.
Jurisdiction: is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility. There are 2 main types of judicial jurisdictions: 1) personal; authority over a person, regardless of their location. 2) Territorial; authority confined to a bounded space, including all those present therein, and events which occur there. 3) Subject Matter; authority over the subject of the legal questions involved in the case.
Know—how: information that enables the accomplishment of a particular task or to operate a particular device or process.
Licence: permission granted by the owner of an intellectual property right to do something restricted by that right, often within a defined time, context, market line and/or territory.
Non-obviousness: assessment criteria of the inventive step, which is one of the patentability conditions for an invention. The inventive step requires that someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject would not consider the patent obvious – that a “qualitative jump” beyond the normal progress of the technology has occurred, thus “non-obvious”.
Novelty: a condition required for patents to be granted and for designs to be eligible for registration. An invention or design must not have been made public, anywhere in the world, before the filing date (or priority date).
Novelty (Plants breeders’ rights): one of the conditions under the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) for the grant of breeder’s right over new plant varieties. A variety is deemed novel if, at the date of filing of the application for a breeder’s right, propagating or harvested material of the variety has not been sold or otherwise disposed of to others, by or with the consent of the breeder, for purposes of exploitation of the variety (i) in the territory of the Contracting Party in which the application has been filed earlier than 1 year before that date; and (ii) in a territory other than that of the Contracting Party in which the application has been filed earlier than four years or, in the case of trees or of vines, earlier than 6 years before the said date (Art 6 UPOV).
Open access: is free, immediate, full-text, online access to digital scientific and scholarly material. OA was made possible by the advent of the internet. OA should be free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Patent: a government grant that gives an inventor the right, for a limited period, to stop others from making, using or selling an invention without the owner’s permission. In return for this right, the applicant must disclose how the invention works.
Patent Application: the documentation submitted when applying for a patent. It includes a specification describing the invention, any necessary drawings, a claim legally defining the limits of the rights claimed, and the filing fee.
Patentable Material: subject matter that is capable of protection under patent laws. Most jurisdictions have exclusions from patentability of abstract and non-technical subject matters such as discoveries and scientific theories.
Period of grace: one of the conditions of granting an intellectual Property Right (Patent, Utility Model or design) is that its subject matter must be novel. The period of grace is the period before the application date during which the inventor/applicant may disclose the content of the application without it being considered to have affected the novelty element.
Piracy: action by which a person reproduces, without the authorisation of the proprietary rights owner, copies of protected work with the purpose to sell them for profit.
Plant Breeders’ Denomination: a form of intellectual property designed specifically to protect new varieties of plants. It is a right to the control of the multiplication and sale of reproductive material for a particular plant variety.
Plant varieties: plant grouping within a single botanical taxon of the lowest known rank. This grouping can be defined by its genotype, distinguished from any other plant grouping by the expression of one of its characteristics and considered as a unit with regard to its suitability for being propagated unchanged.
Prior art: existing technological information against which an invention or design is judged to determine if it is novel and can thus be registered.
Public Good: is a good that is non-rival and non-excludable. This means that that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce the amount of the good available for consumption by others, and no one can be effectively excluded from using that good. Within the CGIAR system, public good is considered VHA
Registered Mark: is a commercial sign that has been registered as a trademark with the appropriate national or international authority. A registered trademark gives its owner the exclusive right to use the sign in question in the course of trade.
Research Exemption: in patent law, is an exemption to the rights conferred by patent. According to this exemption, despite the patent rights, performing research and tests does not constitute infringement for a limited term before the end of patent term.
Royalty fee: sum paid to a copyright owner for the sale or use of the intellectual property.
Taxon (plural taxa): or taxonomic unit, is a name designating an organism or group of organisms.
Trademark: any word, name, symbol, device or any combination thereof, used to identify and distinguish a product (food, drink, clothes etc.) in the market. A service mark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes a service rather than a product. The terms “trademark” and “mark” are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and service marks.
Trade Secret: proprietary information that belongs exclusively to a business, and which is used in the operation of a business to provide an economic or competitive advantage. Trade Secrets include unpatented inventions, formulas, processes, devices, patterns, design drawings, customer databases or operational manuals. It applies to both business information and technical information, Trade Secrets are known to a limited number of individuals within the company who take care to safeguard their confidentiality.
Transactional support: support in drafting legal documents, agreements: the provision of legal advice in contractual negotiations and drafting.
Stewardship: A contract outlining confidential information, materials, knowledge and/or trade secrets that contracting parties wish to share for defined purposes, but restrict from generalised use.
Sources:
Definitions were written and adapted using various sources.
These included but are not restricted to:
The European Commission’s IPR helpdesk and wikipedia.com
