If so, how is it protected nationally? I seem to recall seeing some documentation where the copyright was "held exclusively by the United Nations". Is this some kind of self-imposed authority, or is there a basis within the IP treaties for this?

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you have to pay for it

A copyright, patent or trademark is owned by the creator of the thing that is being copyrighted, trademarked or patented. If it is a book that is being copyrighted, it is the author of the book who owns it. Copyright protection is actually unique in not requiring any filing to preserve it. As long as you make it clear that you wrote it and that you claim it as your copyrighted material, that is all you need. Trademarks are owned by the person or company who creates it. There are some exceptions, such as where you create a trademark that is not unique enough and is confusingly similar to a general term or symbol, or was used previously by someone else. For example, when Apple launched the iPhone they had to negotiate a trademark release from Cisco. Cisco had acquired a company who had an Internet-based phone called iPhone. Cisco was not using the term in its own products and was eventually willing to release the name/trademark to Apple. Patents are owned by the creator of an invention, as long as he or she doesn't incorporate the prior work of someone else. A patent has to be filed & accepted by a patent agency to be protected as such. The information you saw that said that a copyright was held exclusively by the UN probably came off of a UN publication. They were claiming the copyright as the author. If an employee of the UN actually was the author, still it is a work owned by the UN as the employer (there are some exceptions to this rule that the employer not the employee owns the copyright, but that's too much detail to get into for this answer). So to answer your question (yes, I'm finally getting to the point): Yes, an international organization can be the owner of any of these types of intellectual property. Sometimes all 3 forms of patent protection can apply to one thing. For example, when Apple launched the iPhone they had several patents that protected the technological innovations in it, a trademark in the name, and copyright in many of their ads, brochures, and videos of the product.

Anyone who publicates something has a right to copyright it and it can be held exclusively. TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), created by the WTO in 1994, would be where this would fall under. It is the authority that imposes property rights of which copyrights and patents fall under. For organizations, Copyright laws are standardized through international conventions such as the Berne Convention in some countries and are required by international organizations such as European Union or World Trade Organization from their member states. This convention later became a part of the TRIPS convention. They are mainly enforced through the WTO.

Copyright, patent and trademarks if registered in the respective government of countries and not at the United Nations.

Yeah if they WRITE/ INVENT/ OR SELL a product