While copyrights, patents, designs and trademarks may individually protect a particular object, it is also possible that more than one of these forms of protection can be rendered to the same object. For example, an Applied Arts Design may be protec...
While copyrights, patents, designs and trademarks may individually protect a particular object, it is also possible that more than one of these forms of protection can be rendered to the same object. For example, an Applied Arts Design may be protected by several different forms of intellectual property rights. Historically, there had been such Demarcation Principles as Doctrine of Elections, Doctrine of Printed Matter, Doctrine of Functionality that drew a line between different protection forms of intellectual property rights. Especially Doctrine of Elections limited the creator of an intellectual works to only one form of protection but the Doctrine has been substantially abandoned and cumulative protection by the different intellectual property rights has been allowed in general and these Cumulative Protection Systems may cause much troubles and require resolution policy demarcating a line between intellectual property rights. One of the most difficult issues arising under these system is the copyrightability of useful articles(applied arts design) under the "separability standard" that is still an important demarcation principle. Another principle demarcating a line between intellectual property rights is a "doctrine of functionality" in respect of the competition policy, legal purpose of each intellectual property law and public domain problems for consideration. Thus, this article discusses these demarcation principles in order to avoid problems and conflicts under these dual protection systems. Furthermore, this article will analyze the provision for resolving conflicts between intellectual property rights, which is providing that prior rights holder's consent is prerequisite for the use of their registered rights afterwards. This conflict resolving system can be compared with EU legislative system which reject a trademark or design application from registration conflicting with prior copyright by another beforehand. With a comparative perspective, this article will examine the related provisions of ED. And finally this article will propose a workable method for the desirable directions of current system to be revised in the future for the solution of conflicts between Intellectual Property Rights.