Intellectual property fosters human creativity, moving forward the boundaries of science and technology and enriching the world of literature and art.

The notion of intellectual property marks specific rights entitled to authors, inventors and other intellectual property right holders. Intellectual property is not a concrete, material ownership over a certain subject, but it is the right or a set of authorisations granted by legal system of a country to the intellectual property right holder.

What are those authorisations and in what manner they are enforced, it depends on the type of work to be protected in legal system in which the protection is requested. Thanks to multilateral conventions established in a very early period, the field of intellectual property is one out of  a rare law branches which enjoys high degree of harmonization in the majority of legal systems.

„Intellectual property” was mentioned for the first time in a judgement of District Court of USA Federal State of Massachussets from 1845. This judgement is considered to be the first written source containing the term of intellectual property. In the theory of law and French literature, a year later, respectively in 1846, the term propriété intellectuelle was used by Alfred Nion in his work “Droits civils des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs", which leads to indication that this term has been used even previously. The term ‘’intellectual property’’ was defined in the 70s of the last century, from the moment when the Convention establishing World Intellectual Property Organization entered into force. Article 2 viii) of this Convention gives the definition of intellectual property:
“Intellectual property” shall include the rights relating to:

• literary, artistic and scientific works,
• performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts,
• inventions in all fields of human endeavor,
• scientific discoveries,
• industrial designs,
• trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations,
• protection against unfair competition,

and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields”.

Intelectual property is divided into two categories:

• Industrial property which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, geographical indications and appellations of origin, topographies of integrated circuits
• and Copyright and related rights which includes literary, scientific and artistic works.  Rights related to copyright include the rights and composition of legal protection provided for artistic expression, and protection for organization, business and financial investments into performance, production, distribution and broadcast of the author's works.