Syria Participates in the Revival of the World Intellectual Property Day

Damascus- Syria will participates today in the World Intellectual Property Day, which falls on the 26th of April each year through several events to raise awareness of the importance of protecting property at various levels.

 Intellectual property protection elements include the registration of trademarks locally and internationally, patents, industrial designs and copyright.

 The Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection has taken a series of measures to ensure the fortification of local products from counterfeiting, fraud and imitation, as well as to identify inventors and innovators of the importance of their creative ideas and protect and develop them to serve the country and society.

  In this context, the Directorate of Commercial and Industrial Property Protection at the Ministry collects information on this subject for distribution to concerned and interested parties, registration of trademarks, industrial designs and patents locally and internationally, and the granting of certificates.

 The Directorate grants owners of commercial and industrial property rights a set of features including access to foreign markets to prevent local competitors from using the brand, export markets and protect the company’s product from counterfeiting or imitation and thus maintain product quality among consumers.

 The Directorate works to extend the protection of the national brand from the entry of domestic or foreign competitors with similar marks to the brand, which is the only presence of the brand in the market, pointing to the advantages achieved by the international registration of trademarks.

 The Directorate of Protection acts as the agent of the Syrian dealer in coordination with him in all contacts with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) where the trademark owner can register any trademark in 100 countries at the same time, instead of placing several requests in several languages at the offices of the countries where the trademark owner asks in these requests the protection of his trademark and pays fees for each office.

 The Directorate has also simplified its procedures and shortened the technical examination process for trademark registration and decision making regarding these measures.

 The number of applications for registration of trademarks submitted to the Directorate during the year 2017 was 13784 applications and certificates granted to 5237 trademarks, the number of certificates granted to industrial designs was 86 and the number of patents granted was 40.

 In this context, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection sent a letter to the WIPO stressing that Syria’s accession to a number of international treaties and agreements comes within the framework of providing the necessary legislative structure to guarantee commercial and industrial property rights.

 The Ministry also issued the Trademark Guide, the Industrial Model Guide and the Inventor’s Guide, in a bid to encourage intellectual property rights holders to know their rights and duties and protect their creations and products.

 Sh. Kh.