Intellectual Property & Economic Development
A legal protection system has been developed for their protection, the intellectual property system, by virtue of which the owner's right to disposal, use and economic gain derived from the protected intangible property is protected with the assistance of tools and institutions available within the legal system.
The intellectual property system thus becomes a powerful tool for the transformation of the results of creativity into capital and reputation, as it affords legal ownership of intellectual property to the right holders with the exclusive right to disposal and use.
The result of putting the syntagm «knowledge-based economy» into action is basically the creation of manifold knowledge-based creations and achievements, whose ultimate goal is global competitiveness of products and services as a basis and prerequisite for the balanced exchange of goods and increase in the employment rate or, if we put it in other words, the economic development as a whole, in accordance with the needs for an effective respond to the challenges of economic environment.
The attainment of the said objective in modern circumstances envisions, inter alia, obligatory and regular activity, through which all creations and knowledge-based results are legally protected by an appropriate form of intellectual property, which not only prevents the waste of resources invested in the creation of the results of intellectual activities, but excludes the possibility of uncontrolled and unlawful use of such results and on the other side, it allows for their capitalization by the entities and individuals who created them.
As a result of development within international and national frameworks through almost 125 years, we presently witness the effective functioning of established, developed intellectual property systems in the countries whose economies are traditionally founded upon proprietary and market-oriented principles.
A series of indicators which prove the effectiveness of the use of national intellectual property systems in the function of economic development in the countries whose economies traditionally rest upon proprietary and market-oriented principles is long, which is the result of historical conditionality and preconditions created.
The development of intellectual property, in particular the industrial property, in the world, as well as positive experience acquired in the practical use of its effects, resulted in intellectual property becoming an unquestionable and unexpendable contemporary resource and device for the economic systems of industrially developed countries in achieving global competitiveness and success in market competition, not only on global and regional plans, but also within the national frameworks.
Owing to historical development and practical experience, not only has professional awareness been created in the countries which constitute competitive economic environment to Bosnia and Herzegovina within the EU framework and global frameworks, but an unquestionable, infallibly functioning awareness that there are not any doubts whatsoever as to the necessity of the use of intellectual property in the function of economic development has been created at all levels of national hierarchy in these countries, from the top layers of executive and legislative branches, over the management structures in scientific, research, development, higher-education sectors and the entire economic sector, down to the individuals participating as doers in such sectors.
In the countries which traditionally belong to the group of world's leading industrially developed countries, a corresponding synthesis of the research-development sector (R&D) and overall innovative processes with the intellectual property system has been created as an ultimate result of historical development, along with simultaneous incorporation of intellectual property in all social segments and activities relevant for achieving the global competitiveness of technical solutions and products based on the results of their own scientific, research-development and related processes.
The current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in respect of intellectual property in the function of economic development is a good foundation for getting closer to the practices prevailing in the countries of competitive economic environment in the EU and within global frameworks, namely the countries whose economies are traditionally founded upon proprietary and market-oriented principles and whose effective system of the use of intellectual property in the function of economic development is already in place.