Understanding what industrial property is, what it protects, and the value it represents is of vital importance to anyone who has an idea and intends to develop it. Indeed, this term serves as a synthesis for a set of legal instruments aimed at granting exclusive rights over intangible assets.
What is meant by industrial property?
Just like tangible goods, intangible assets such as intellectual creations can be subject to ownership.
This is a concept that, over time, has acquired increasing economic significance, becoming one of the most relevant fields of law.
Through the system of industrial property rights (privative industriali), it aims to promote competition by guaranteeing the company that decides to innovate an exclusive right over its idea or its technological innovation process.
It is, therefore, a reward recognized for human creative/inventive activity which, on one hand, intends to attribute ownership of the work to its author. On the other hand, once authorship is recognized, it allows the author to exploit the generated economic returns, ensuring fair remuneration for the intellectual work and the investments made.
The protection of intellectual creations, the value of which is inestimable, aims to safeguard any human idea and its manifestations of creativity, such as artistic and literary works, industrial inventions and utility models, designs, and trademarks.
It follows that it can potentially affect any field, from medicine to art in any form (literature, painting, sculpture, music), passing through engineering, information technology, and the scientific sector in general. Precisely because of its importance and the implications—both factual and economic—that concern it, the protection of industrial property is certainly a significant area of law.
The meaning of industrial and intellectual property
Industrial property means, in practice, having ownership of an idea or a project realized from an intellectual manifestation. This idea, whether subjective or group-based, leads to the elaboration of a theory, the creation of a work, the construction of a product, the development of an algorithm, or the discovery of a drug, depending on the field of operation: the possibilities are infinite, as is human ingenuity.
From a legal point of view, it is characterized by two aspects.
The first is the personal aspect, inherent to the recognition of the right of the individual who had the idea to be recognized as the owner of said idea, the creator of that invention, and the owner of the realization of their project. Whoever creates the idea is its author and the owner of the work, and this right to be recognized as such is a strictly personal right (diritto personalissimo).
The second aspect, closely connected to the first, is of a patrimonial nature: being the author of a work or product entails not only having its authorship legally recognized but also being able to independently enjoy—as is only fair—the patrimonial and economic returns that can be obtained from the exploitation of that idea. The patrimonial availability of the proceeds deriving from the use of a product belonging to us as industrial property constitutes a disposable right. To achieve this, it is necessary to proceed with the registration of a trademark and the filing of a patent to ensure maximum protection.
Industrial property must therefore be distinguished from intellectual property, as it essentially represents a specific category thereof, concerning products that can be used, with the widest possible applications and uses, in the industrial sector.
Industrial property: how is it protected?
Industrial property is protected through the recognition of both the moral rights connected to the authorship of the work and the economic returns deriving from its sale or use, which vary according to the nature of the work. If an intellectual work is identified as such, it can obtain the relative recognition, and consequently, ownership of the profits that may derive from its economic exploitation is guaranteed.
Based on the object of protection, ownership of intellectual creations can be differentiated into:
- Industrial property: specifically aims to protect trademarks, patents, and distinctive signs.
- Copyright (diritto d'autore): protects artistic or literary works, including advertisements or television programs, as well as IT products such as software.
To best protect intellectual property, whatever the object may be, the advice is to register or patent it (in the case of a patent) at the UIBM (Ufficio Italiano Brevetti e Marchi – Italian Patent and Trademark Office).
In reality, the protection of industrial creations is proving increasingly strategic for fostering progress and innovation: a new way to produce wealth and to promote the progress and prosperity of society.
To what extent is industrial property protected in Italy?
In 2018, the International Property Rights Index was presented in Johannesburg. According to this ranking, which takes into account how industrial and intellectual property is protected in more than 125 countries representing approximately 98% of the world's Gross Domestic Product and 93% of the population, Italy is ranked 50th.
This figure highlights the low level of awareness that our country shows toward a topic that is certainly central in other countries.
It is no coincidence, in fact, that the top positions in this ranking are occupied by countries that have always had a strong vocation for innovation, such as the United States, Singapore, Sweden, Norway, Finland (leading everyone), and Switzerland.
Italy, however, is also behind most of the countries belonging to the European Union, such as Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
At the bottom of this special ranking, instead, we find Nicaragua, Mauritania, Algeria, Yemen, and Haiti.
2019 Growth Decree: funding to protect IP
The "Decreto Crescita" (Growth Decree), in force since May 1, 2019, contains various measures regarding the protection of intellectual works aimed, among other things, at supporting start-ups and SMEs in filing patents, trademarks, and designs; facilitating access to the "Patent Box" tax regime; assisting in the fight against "Italian Sounding" practices; protecting historic trademarks of national interest; and allowing for the obtaining of an Italian patent directly via a PCT international application.
In other words, the Government aims to incentivize the exploitation of industrial property by Italian companies in the form of tax breaks and incentives, provisions for the revival of private investment, and regulations for the protection of "Made in Italy."
In the fiscal field, changes were introduced to the patent-box regulations and a new discipline for tax credits for research and development activities and for the "brain gain" (rientro dei cervelli).
Regarding the revival of private investment, incentives were provided to support research and development projects for the conversion of production processes within the circular economy.
Finally, to protect and promote "Made in Italy," the decree provides for the introduction of regulations to counter so-called "Italian sounding," incentives for filing patents and trademarks, and protections for historic trademarks of national interest under the Codice della Proprietà Industriale (Industrial Property Code).