The rapid development of information technologies in our country, especially in the last one-and-a-half years, has objectively matured the need to seriously deal with the protection of intellectual property. This is one of the key issues, the solution of which will allow to protect one’s developments on a legal level and move forward. On October 12, for the first time in many years, the conference on “Intellectual property protection and promotion of venture investments” was launched in Armenia, which in itself was a big step forward. According to Emma Arakelyan, director of “Orion Worldwide Innovation”, Armenia is capable of software licensing to become a regional center. According to him, a package of legislative reforms has been developed by the Armenian Bar Association group, which will allow to issue software licenses not only to domestic or regional, but also to European developers.

However, there are many difficulties and nuances along the way, with which the authors of these ideas must take into account. In a number of countries, computer programs, both source and object, are protected by copyright, the most important advantage of which is simplicity. Copyright protection does not depend on formal procedures, such as registration or assignment of copies for protection in the 151 countries participating in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. This means that international copyright protection is self-created: it begins with creation since creation. In addition, the copyright holder enjoys relatively long protection, which typically lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 50 years or, in some countries, 70 years after the author’s death.

In order to have any hope of patent protection, an invention must meet several criteria. Five of those criteria are the most important to establish the fact of patentability.

1. The invention must consist of a patentable object;
2. The invention must be industrially applicable (or useful in some countries);
3. It must be new (novelty);
4. It must have an inventive step (be non-obvious);
5. The disclosure of the invention in the patent application must meet certain standards in form and substance. Since patent law applies indiscriminately to inventions in any field of technology, inventions related to software and practical methods must also meet these requirements to be patentable.

If you want to protect your innovation abroad, you must obtain a patent in each country of interest in accordance with the laws of that country. A patent issued by country X can only be enforced in that same country X, and you cannot prevent your competitors from using your invention in other countries. In some regions, a regional patent office, such as the European Patent Office, accepts patent applications or grants patents that have the same effect as applications served or patents granted in member states of that region. The main difficulty to which you may encounter in your efforts to obtain a license abroad is that national/regional laws and practices vary from country to country and region to region. It is entirely possible that some software innovations are patentable in the US, while the same innovations are not patentable subject matter in Europe or Japan.

Undoubtedly, all these nuances should be taken into account and the ways to overcome them should be calculated. But the mere fact that Armenia has embarked on the implementation of that idea is another step in the direction of introducing information technologies in our country. We wish success to all our compatriots who are engaged in bringing these ideas and legislation to life.

Karapet Kalenchyan