refers to neutral mechanisms allowing parties to solve their disputes outside of court in a private forum, with the assistance of a qualified neutral intermediary of their choice. ADR can only be applied if all parties agree to submit their dispute to the procedure or if it is mandated by a competent court.

Elements of the state of the technique accessible to the public before the considered date, whatever their support (written or not)

results from features such as lines, contours, colors, shape, texture or the materials of the product itself or its ornamentation.

able to be used or obtained

Benelux Office for Intellectual Property

a particular identity or image regarded as an assetto take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product.

A quotation from or reference to a publication , a book, paper or author

definition of the features of the invention that a non-authorized third party is not allowed to reproduce. The claim defines the scope of protection. The content of a claim is often referred to as the “claimed subject matter”. The scope of the claims in a patent application usually evolves during examination to a narrower scope, in function of the identified prior art.

a thing made to be identical or very similar to another thing

has two components:
- Moral rights, which are not transferable and give the creator the right to be identified as the author of the work and the right to object to any distortion or mutilation of the work.
- Economic rights, which entitle the owner to control the use of its creation in a number of ways (making copies, issuing copies to the public, performing in public, broadcasting etc) and to obtain an appropriate economic reward.

Copyright is a legal term describing rights given to creators for their original literary, musical or artistic works which allow them to control their subsequent use. These include for example:
- technology based works
- drawings, maps, charts or plans
- photographs and films
- architectural works
- sculptures
- sound recordings
- TV and radio broadcasts

the practice of imitating genuine goods, often of inferior quality, with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product.

is the practice of imitating genuine goods, often to inferior quality, with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product.

the action or process of bringing something into existence

the place at a port, airport or frontier where officials check incoming goods, travellers and luggage

A design right is an Intellectual Property right that protects the overall impression of a product or parts of a product, on the condition that these elements are new and have individual character.

the features, the appearance of a part or the whole product:
- two-dimensional features such as patterns, lines and/or color
- three-dimensional features such as shape, texture and/or surface of an article are protectable by design right if they are not dictated by functional considerations

cloud-based software that allows users to create and manage the content that is displaying on a digital sign. From any PC or MAC, users will able to create dynamic layouts of media-rich content and remotely update digital signage screens, video walls, touch screen displays, and digital kiosks.

marking as separate or different/having or giving an uncommon and appealing quality

the part of a network address that identifies it as belonging to a particular domain.Each website has a domain name that serves as an address, which is used to access the website.

European Patent Office

European Union Intellectual Property Office

results from features such as lines, contours, colors, shape, texture or the materials of the product itself or its ornamentation.

Search service helps identify potential patent barriers to commercializing your products or technologies. This due diligence process examines the claims language of third-party, in-force patents as a means of assessing your risk of potential infringement. The purpose of an FTO search is to identify in-force patents or published patent applications with claims that cover the technology, process, or product you are targeting

Generic top-level domains are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of every fully qualified domain name. The core group of generic top-level domains consists of the com, info, net, and org domains

information that is securely filed. It should be regarded as a (digital) safe in which information is placed. An i-DEPOT can be submitted in paper form or digitally and can consist of text, photos, source codes, music, etc.

if the general impression the design makes on the informed user differs from the general impression made on that user by designs made available to the public before the filing date or before the date of priority of the concerned design

Industrial property is one of two subsets of intellectual property, mainly including the rights obtained after a registration process. Patents, designs, trademarks, Geographical Indications are Industrial property rights.

IP infringement is any breach of intellectual property rights. IP rights are infringed when a work protected by IP laws is used, copied or otherwise exploited without having the proper permission from a person who owns those rights. Examples of an IP infringement are “counterfeiting” and “piracy." Counterfeiting is the practice of imitating genuine goods, often to inferior quality, with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product. Piracy is an unauthorized copying, use, reproduction and/or distribution of materials protected by intellectual property rights.

Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. The most well-known types are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The law gives people and businesses property rights to the information and intellectual goods they create, usually for a limited period of time.

a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols

The invention must show an inventive step that could not be deduced by a person with average knowledge of the technical field

Intellectual Property of Industrial Property

a trademark owner (Licensor) grants permission to another (Licensee) to use that trademark on mutually agreed terms and conditions

a small picture or design that a company or organization uses as its symbol

Distinctive sign for products and/or services

rights neighbouring to copyright, created for three categories of people who are not technically authors: performing artists, producers of phonograms, and those involved in radio and television broadcasting. They are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author.

not existing before

The invention must show some new characteristic that is not known in the body of existing knowledge (referred to as prior art) in its technical field.

possibility for a third party, during a defined period of time, to provide to an administration, grounds to prevent or cancel the grant of an IP right”. OR Opposition systems stricto sensu offer third parties an opportunity to oppose the grant of a patent or a brand within a certain period of time provided by the applicable law

Belgian Office for intellectual Property

In addition to monopoly protection in the form of a patent and a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), medicinal products may also be protected by a paediatric extension, which extends the lifetime of an SPC by a further six months.

A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio. The monetary benefits of a patent portfolio include a market monopoly position for the portfolio holder and revenue from licensing the intellectual property. Non-monetary benefits include strategic advantages like first-mover advantages and defense against rival portfolio holders. Constituting a patent portfolio may also be used to encourage investment

The word “patent”, or “letters patent”, also denotes the document issued by the relevant government authority. In order to obtain a patent for an invention, the inventor, or often the inventor’s employer, submits an application to the national or regional patent office concerned. In the application, the applicant must describe the invention in detail and compare it with previous existing technologies in the same field in order to demonstrate that it is new. Not all inventions are patentable. Patent laws generally require that an invention fulfill different conditions, known as the requirements or conditions of patentability.

a repeated decorative design

Describing pharmaceutical agents of plant origin.

the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work.

also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give the breeder exclusive control over the propagating material (including seed, cuttings, divisions, tissue culture) and harvested material (cut flowers, fruit, foliage) of a new variety for a number of years. The application of PVR is similar in principle to the intellectual property protection offered via copyright on books and music and to patents on a wide range of innovative products including biological material.

an article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale

an article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale

Citation is important because in all types of scholarly and research writing it is necessary to document the source works that underpin particular concepts, positions, propositions and arguments with citations

Official platform where procedure leading to the obtention of the IP rights are published as well as bibliographical data regarding ownership of the rights

Any activity performed for the benefit of third parties

the external form, contours, or outline of something

are intellectual property rights that extend patent protection (for up to five years) for medicinal products that must undergo lengthy testings and clinical trials before being authorized to be placed on the EU market.

Most laws dealing with the protection of inventions do not actually define what an invention is. A number of countries, however, define inventions as new solutions to technical problems. The problem may be old or new, but the solution, in order to be considered an invention, must be a new one. Merely discovering something that already exists in nature will not generally qualify as an invention; an adequate amount of human ingenuity, creativity and inventiveness must be involved. But an invention need not be technically complex: the safety pin was an invention that solved a “technical” problem. Patents, also referred to as patents for invention, are the most widespread means of protecting technical inventions.

a symbol to indicate that the sign TM is next to, is used as a trademark

A trade- service mark is a sign by which a business identifies its products and/or services and distinguishes them from those supplied by competitors. It can be distinctive words, signs or other features. Its purpose is to establish in the mind of the customer a link between the different products and/or services that the company offers, and then distinguish them from those supplied by competitors.

A trade mark may consist of any sign, particularly words, including personal names, logos, letters, numerals, colors, the shape of goods or of their packaging or sounds, provided that such signs are capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings and they can be represented in the Registers.

A trademark is a sign by which a business identifies its products or services and distinguishes them from those supplied by competitors. It can be distinctive words, marks or other features. Its purpose is to establish in the mind of the customer a link between all the different products and/or services that the company offers, and then distinguish them from those supplied by competitors. A trade mark may consist of any signs capable of being represented graphically, particularly words, including personal names, logos, letters, numerals, the shape of goods or of their packaging, provided that such signs are capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings.

violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees. Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to productsand/ or services which are identical or similar to the products and/or services which the registration covers

sets out the legal framework for the resolution of disputes between a domain name registrant and a third party (i.e., a party other than the registrar) over the abusive registration and use of an Internet domain name in the generic top level domains or gTLDs

Patent protection is granted for a limited period, generally 20 years from the filing date of the application

a set of related web pages located under a single domain name.

World Intellectual Property Organization