Intellectual property encompasses literary and artistic property (principally author copyright) and industrial property (patents, supplementary protection certificates, trademarks, Patent. A patent confers on its holder a monopoly for exploiting a product or procedure, in exchange for an obligation to publish a description of the product or procedure. Since 1994, the duration of protection has been 20 years (2,3). It amounts to a temporary privatisation of knowledge: no using, manufacturing, or importing of the innovation is legally possible during this period, without the consent of the patent holder (2).
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