The 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a union designed to help the people of one country obtain protection in other countries for their intellectual creations in the form of industrial property rights, known as inventions (patents), trademarks or industrial designs.
This Convention (still valid in 2011) became enforceable in 1884 with 14 member States who set up an International Bureau to carry out its administrative tasks for “the creation of a union which, without encroaching on the municipal law of the contracting countries, would lay down a number of general principles securing the interests of industrial property in the interior of a country as well as abroad” (Ladas, Stephen P., “Patents, Trademarks, and Related Rights, National and International Protection”, Harvard University Press, 1975, p. 63).