Sui Generis Rights in the Intellectual Property System

The chapter examines the reasons for introducing sui generis intellectual property rights and their place within the intellectual property legal framework. The discussion opens with the analysis of the notion of intellectual property, focusing on the different rationales for introducing intellectual property protection regimes. In analyzing the appropriateness of the standard intellectual property rights for protection of specific subject matter, the chapter focuses on the examples of databases, designs, and plant varieties. This analysis demonstrates that the standard forms of intellectual property protection regimes cannot ensure adequate legal protection of the mentioned subject matter, thus prompting the creation of special legal regimes, i.e., sui generis rights. Although the nature of, and the rationale for, sui generis intellectual property rights have been the object of continuous debate in both scholarly and political circles, their introduction into the legal frameworks of the EU and U.S. provide an opportunity to study practical experience with such a special form of legal protection of intellectual property.