The laws in Arab countries are primarily derived from the Islamic Shari'a. For instance, Article 7 of the UAE Constitution states,Islamic Shari'a shall be the main source of legislation in the Union.Historically, disputes aboutIPR in Arab countries have been governed by Shari'a law. The plausible reason for this can be attributed to the wide scope of Islamic law which can be inferred to be inclusive of IPR.

The right to trademark protection has been interpreted by analogy as a private property right based on prior usage, which is governed by Islamic property laws. In general, Islamic property laws provide protection for personal property and are supportive of freedom of usage and free competition. Undermining such rights, say, by the unauthorized use of a trademark, constitutes damaging conduct for which the offender must make amends or reparation.

Part 22 Chapter 34. Saba Verse 2 of the Holy Quran states "All praise is due to Allah, to Whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth..." The Holy Quran believes in the title of ownership of property belonging to the almighty Allah. This however does not mean that individuals are deprived of private ownership under Islam.

One Pakistani scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani of Pakistan argues that: "there are no express provisions in the basic texts which limit ownership to tangible objects. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are legitimate claims to ownership which give their owners the right to profit from these claims."

Most schools of law in Sharia agree on the recognition of IP as a specie of property.

Further Islam in itself contains protected marks and symbols that define, identify, and preserve Islamic practices and rituals. For example, Masjid is a protected part of Islamic IP both as a symbol and as a design. Other protected symbols include the adhan (call to prayer), which is a unique symbol of Islam and cannot be used by others to call people to any other gathering or for any other purpose, the five daily prayers with prescribed physical movements, the Ramadan, the month of fasting, the zakat, the paying of a fixed share of one's income to the poor and the needy, and the hajj, the annual pilgrimage when Muslims of the world congregate in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the Islamic greeting of "assalam-u-alaikam" (peace be upon you), etc.

Thus Sharia law recognizes the existence and protection of IPR.

Shari'a recognizes the concept of title separation of title and third-party usage. This concept permits a titleholder's ownership divisionto grant a third person the right to use the property without the titleholder having to surrender ownership. Sharia's division of title for the property is similar to how IPR is currently licensed.

Arab countries follow Sharia law and have laws in place that do not contradict it. For instance, article 7 of the Constitution of UAE explicitly mentions that the main source of legislation in the Union shall be the Islamic Shari'a.

The Council of Ministers adopted Resolution No. 50/1978 in 1978 UAE. This began a systematic process of creating federal legislation in the Union. This Resolution formed a High Committee tasked with converting UAE legislation to Islam. According to the Resolution, The High Committee's job was to understand where current USE legislation clashed with Shari'a's core concepts, and then come up with new legislation to rectify the problem.The members of the High Committee knew from the start that to Islamise the UAE legal system, federal legislation covering important legal sectors would be needed. It was also obvious that the constitutional provisions and orders particularly those relating to the unity and modernization of the judicial system would be taken into account when drafting these laws. As a result, the High Committee drafted comprehensive federal laws covering the most important legal sectors; these draft laws took the shape of Western codes and statutes, which were mostly drawn from Shari'a jurisprudence or compliant with Shari'a requirements.

Therefore, laws concerning IP in Arab countries are derived from Shari'a laws despite that the implementation of the laws has been seen as 'relaxed'. It's astonishing since Sharia law is a religious code that is respected by Arab countries because most of them follow Islam. In the past several Arab countries have witnessed a high number of IPR violation cases. They have been put on the Priority Watch List by USTR.The relaxed approach towards implementation of IP laws and little efforts to integrate IPR into the national economic policy despite acknowledgment of the importance of IP can be ascribed to the fact that most of the Arab countries are developing and due to this have a common misconception that strong IPR only benefit developed countries.

Recently the Arab countries like Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,etc. were removed from the Priority Watch List as a result of significant progress related to IP enforcement and transparency, steps taken by the country to improve IP enforcement procedures,erecting of specialized IP enforcement courts with skilled judges and faster schedules; conducting strong IP awareness, outreach, training, and support; and establishing a centralized committee to orchestrate IP enforcement actions across multiple authorities, etc. UAE enacted a new Industrial Property, Trademark, Copyright, and Cyber Crime law in 2021. It can be assumed that seeing the poor integration of IPR in the national economic policies the Arab countries realized the importance of IP for their economic interest.

Conclusion

It may be established that Shari'a law is the foundation of the legislation of Arab nations. Shari'a law does not expressly talk about IP but the words used while referring to ownership ensure that the scope of ownership is not limited to tangible property and is inclusive of IP even though these laws have been obtained from Shari'a the Arab countries have seen a high number of IPR violations in the past. Such violations arose purely due to a lack of economic knowledge on the part of Arab countries. The number of violations has now reduced owing to the rising economic awareness of Arab countries.

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