Insurance Contract for Litigation Expenses Related to Intellectual Property: An Innovative Model of Insurance Contracts
Dr. Saad Abdulkareem Abulghanam – Assistant Professor of Commercial Law – School of Law – University of Jordan
Dr. Basim Mohammad Melhem – Associate Professor of Commercial Law – Police Academy – Qatar – School of Law – University of Jordan
Prof. Bassam Hamad Al Tarawneh – Professor of Commercial Law – Faculty of Law – University of Philadelphia – Jordan
Abstract:
The typical venue for protection and enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in case of infringement is litigation. However, high expenses associated with litigation in this field have become a serious obstacle to the owners of those rights where, unfortunately, many of whom are financially incapable of affording such high litigation expenses. Therefore, a need arose to furnish a solution to address this dilemma. As a result of the increased concern; the interested parties reached a solution through the creation of a special insurance coverage made available by insurance companies.
Under this new type of insurance coverage, the insurance company is not obligated to pay the insured an amount of money, a salary income or any other financial compensation in the event of accident or danger; instead its obligation is to pay the expenses of litigation sustained by owners which, in turn, enable them to protect and defend their rights. Thus, Intellectual property insurance is considered as a unique insurance coverage based mainly on securing the expenses of all types of litigation throughout all stages of proceedings.
Since, however, Intellectual property insurance contract is absent in our Arab Countries, this paper undertakes to analyze this emerging type of insurance contracts and to clarify its characteristics and legal nature based on studying its origins, historical development, definition, legal framework and its effect and practical benefits.
Besides being the first to address this topic, the merit of this paper is that it has linked two important legal topics: intellectual property rights and insurance, which, as a result, contributes to the development of insurance thought as well as providing real protection to owners of intellectual property rights.
Keywords: Protection of intellectual property rights, Intellectual property insurance, patents, creativity, innovation, copyrights.