The Paris Convention and the International Framework of Industrial Property

1. Background

By the 1870s inventors were reluctant to exhibit at international fairs, such as the Vienna exhibition of 1873, because their inventions could be copied abroad without remedy. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property was signed in 1883 and has been revised several times, most recently at Stockholm in 1967. Its secretariat became part of WIPO, which administers it. India acceded in 1998, the same year it joined the PCT, as part of meeting its TRIPS obligations. The Convention does not create a uniform law; it sets minimum rules and leaves the rest to member states.

2. National treatment (Article 2)

Nationals of any member state enjoy in every other member the same protection as that state gives its own nationals, without any requirement of domicile or establishment, subject to the formalities imposed on nationals. Article 3 extends this to non-nationals domiciled or having a real and effective establishment in a member. National treatment does not require reciprocity: India must protect a French applicant on Indian terms even if French law is more generous.

3. Right of priority (Article 4)

A person who files a regular application in one member state may, within a fixed period, file in other members and claim the first filing date. The periods are twelve months for patents and utility models and six months for industrial designs and trademarks. A later application is not invalidated by acts done in the interval, such as publication or another person's filing. Without priority, an inventor would have to file everywhere on the same day or lose novelty. In India, convention applications are governed by sections 133 to 139 of the Patents Act; section 135 sets the twelve-month window.

4. Independence of rights

Article 4bis: patents applied for in different member states for the same invention are independent. Refusal, revocation or expiry in one country does not affect the patent elsewhere. Article 6(3) states the same for marks. This follows from territoriality and is why Novartis could hold patents on imatinib mesylate in many countries and still be refused one in India.

5. Other substantive provisions

• Article 5A: working and compulsory licences. Importation by the patentee of articles made elsewhere does not lead to forfeiture. Members may grant compulsory licences to prevent abuses such as failure to work, but not before four years from filing or three years from grant, whichever ends later, and only if the patentee fails to give legitimate reasons for inaction. Forfeiture is allowed only if compulsory licences have proved insufficient, and not before two years from the first licence. Sections 84 and 85 of the Indian Act follow this structure.
• Article 5bis: a grace period of at least six months for payment of maintenance fees.
• Article 5ter: patented devices on vessels, aircraft or vehicles temporarily in a country do not infringe (reflected in s.49 of the Patents Act).
• Article 6bis: well-known marks. Members must refuse or cancel registration, and prohibit use, of a mark that reproduces or imitates a mark considered well known in that country as belonging to a person entitled to Convention benefits, for identical or similar goods. TRIPS Article 16(2)–(3) extended this to services and, for registered well-known marks, to dissimilar goods. Sections 11(6) to 11(10) of the Trade Marks Act implement it.
• Article 6ter: state emblems, flags and official hallmarks may not be registered as marks.
• Article 6quinquies (“telle quelle”): a mark duly registered in its country of origin must be accepted for filing and protected as is in other members, subject to listed exceptions.
• Article 8: trade names are protected without registration.
• Article 10bis: unfair competition. Any act of competition contrary to honest practices in industrial or commercial matters; in particular, acts creating confusion, false allegations discrediting a competitor, and misleading indications. Article 39 of TRIPS hangs the protection of trade secrets on this article.

6. The registration treaties

Classification treaties sit alongside: Nice (goods and services for marks), Locarno (designs), Strasbourg (International Patent Classification) and Vienna (figurative elements of marks). India uses these classifications in practice.

7. From Paris to TRIPS

Paris had two weaknesses. It set few substantive minimums (it did not require patents for any particular field, or fix a term), and it had no effective enforcement: disputes could go to the International Court of Justice, but no state used that route. Developed countries therefore moved IP into the GATT Uruguay Round. The TRIPS Agreement (1994, in force for WTO members from 1 January 1995) requires compliance with Articles 1 to 12 and 19 of the Paris Convention (Art 2.1), adds substantive minimums (patents in all fields of technology for 20 years, Arts 27 and 33), adds enforcement obligations (Part III), and subjects all of it to the WTO dispute settlement system. India's first loss under TRIPS, India — Patent Protection for Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Chemical Products (WTO Appellate Body, 1997), concerned the mailbox provisions and led to the 1999 amendment of the Patents Act.

How this is examined

Usually a 16-mark question on the Paris Convention, or on the international framework for industrial property. Order: background, the three pillars with article numbers, 5A, 6bis, 10bis, the registration treaties table, then TRIPS. In the Patents paper (2024, Q6) the same material is combined with the PCT; see the Patents note on Paris and the PCT for the patent detail.