Paris Convention

Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property

The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris, France, on 20 March 1883, was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a Union for the protection of industrial property. The Convention is currently still in force. The substantive provisions of the Convention fall into three main categories: national treatment, priority right and common rules.

National treatment

According to Articles 2 and 3 of this treaty, juristic and natural persons who are either national of or domiciled in a state party to the Convention shall, as regards the protection of industrial property, enjoy in all the other countries of the Union, the advantages that their respective laws grant to nationals.

In other words, when an applicant files an application for a patent or a trademark in a foreign country member of the Union, the application receives the same treatment as if it came from a national of this foreign country. Furthermore, if the intellectual property right is granted (e.g. if the applicant becomes owners of a patent or of a registered trademark), the owner benefits from the same protection and the same legal remedy against any infringement as if the owner was a national owner of this right.

Priority right

The "Convention priority right", also called "Paris Convention priority right" or "Union priority right", was also established by Article 4 of this treaty. It provides that an applicant from one contracting State shall be able to use its first filing date (in one of the contracting State) as the effective filing date in another contracting State, provided that the applicant, or his successor in title, files a subsequent application within 6 months (for industrial designs and trademarks) or 12 months (for patents and utility models) from the first filing.

As of September 2014, the Convention has 176 contracting member countries,which makes it one of the most widely adopted treaties worldwide.

The Paris Convention is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Reference 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Industrial_Property