Sri Lanka Overview

Sri Lankan Intellectual Property

History
Sri Lanka has a long history in the legal protection of Intellectual Property having registered its first Trademark in the year1875 and granted the first Patent in 1886 just three years after the conclusion of the famous Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property

Sri Lanka pursues an open economic policy. This has resulted in a large number of Trade Marks owned by Multi-national Companies and other international firms being registered in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka besides its market of 20 million assumes greater commercial importance due to its close proximity to the huge (1 Billion) market of neighbouring India and also other large markets of Pakistan and Bangladesh and the trade facilitation encouraged by the Bi-lateral and Investment Agreements entered into with these countries and others including America. The current law is embodied in the ‘Intellectual Property Act No 36 of 2003′. This law which originally came into being with the blessings of the United Nations specialized Agency on Intellectual Property, the Geneva based ‘World Intellectual Property Organization’ (WIPO), is acclaimed to be a model law in the Asian Pacific Region.

  1. Sri Lanka is, inter alias, a Member of the following multi-national Conventions
  2. Convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization.
  3. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
  4. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
  5. Patent Cooperation Treaty
  6. TRIPS Agreement.

Sri Lanka follows the Nice Agreement in the Classification of Goods and Services.