Intellectual property rights: The unsung heroes of election integrity

Intellectual property rights form an integral part of the political landscape, protecting the creative expressions, strategies, and technological advancements that underpin successful campaigns. As IPRs continue to evolve, so does the importance of safeguarding them, ensuring that political parties and their supporters benefit from the protections they offer

With elections round the corner and a lot of buzz on voting, campaigns, and events all in the state, there is a lot on stake for the Political parties. Every Party is now trying to woo their voters to cast their vote and make their candidates win. We as a public need to understand the art and science of campaigns and what all intellectual property right exists in elections and campaign.

Intellectual property rights is an asset and is protected through various statutes owners of the copyrights, patents, trademarks, designs are encouraged to create new things and earn compensation for their works, products and also services.

Let’s begin with the heart and soul of elections in India -The Indelible Ink used to mark the completion of voting. This is an intellectual property, which was an innovation of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of CSIR in 1952 and the technology had been licensed to Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd (A govt of Karnataka Undertaking) So, the composition of the ink is the intellectual property of CSIR which as licensed for the benefit of people and nation and been used since the third elections in India to till date.

Of all the intellectual property rights, copyright plays a pivotal role in the process of election campaigns and politics. From the songs being made to the music and tune with the lyrics are subject matter of copyright of individual parties. It is the way of expression of how words, music, and lyrics are made and played in public to showcase their achievements. Many parties hire content writers, authors, and choreographers to make their films, songs, and speeches. Each item has its own copyright and will account for infringement if being used in an unauthorized manner without proper permission.

The manifesto of each party is the biggest copyright of the parties on how they have expressed their vision, thoughts, and work in the form of literature and presenting to the public. Slogans, speeches, short films, are also the copyright of respective parties and any copying the same will account for violation of intellectual property rights. Political parties need to be careful of the fact on playing copyright songs, though technically campaigns do not need explicit permissions from the artists to use their work, but still it should be noted that in spite of having all the legal permissions, the author could make a claim for their “right of publicity” and sue the campaign. Hence, it’s pertinent to take an no objection from the author to play his or her songs during the campaign. Same ideas can come to more than one party, but the “expression” of the idea needs to be original and real.

Another form of intellectual property rights which is very vital for success of any party in elections are trade secrets. Like any company, enterprises doing business have their own trade secrets, every political party will have this form of IP kept well secrets. Trade secrets in politics could be the strategy to select a candidate, the launch of schemes, the new initiatives, a form of survey to get the pulse of people and many more strategies which may be a subject matter of trade secrets.

Another IPR to be noted is the patent – which is given for a technology and in the case of elections, The Electronic Voting Machine is a patented technology which changed the landscape of voting in India since 2000, to make it faster, efficient, and robust in order to conduct free and fair elections.

Lastly, intellectual property rights are constantly evolving and growing. With technology fast pacing it’s more important to protect the owners of IPRs and see that they benefit from the same in their political journey to serve the nation.

(The author is the Head of Legal & IPR at Resolute Group of Companies and a GI Agent)