Every university has a name and a seal. Very few have a name and a seal that are protected by an international treaty. Since 31 March 2010, the name "Euclid University (EUCLID)" and the EUCLID emblem have been protected under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, a protection that international law reserves for States and intergovernmental organizations. This article explains what that protection is, how it is obtained, and why it matters to students, employers and credential evaluators.
What Article 6ter is
The Paris Convention of 1883 is one of the oldest international treaties still in force, and it is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations. Article 6ter of the Convention protects three kinds of signs against registration and use as trademarks:
- armorial bearings, flags and other State emblems;
- official signs and hallmarks used by States to indicate control and warranty;
- the names, abbreviations, flags, armorial bearings and other emblems of intergovernmental organizations.
The third category was added at the 1958 Lisbon revision of the Convention. Since 1995, the same obligations have also bound the members of the World Trade Organization, because the TRIPS Agreement incorporates the substantive provisions of the Paris Convention.
Why only States and intergovernmental organizations qualify
Article 6ter is not a trademark and cannot be bought or registered by a company, a foundation or a private university. It exists to protect the symbols of public international authority. A State may communicate its own emblems; an intergovernmental organization, created by an agreement between States, may communicate its name, abbreviation and emblem. A purely private institution has no access to this mechanism, whatever its size or reputation.
For EUCLID, this follows directly from its legal nature. EUCLID was established by an intergovernmental agreement between sovereign States, registered with the United Nations Secretariat and published in the United Nations Treaty Series under numbers 49006 and 49007. Its Article 6ter protection is one more public record of that status.
How the protection is obtained
The procedure is public and documented. The organization asks WIPO to communicate its signs to the States party to the Paris Convention and to the members of the WTO. WIPO publishes the communication in its Article 6ter Express database, and the date of publication counts as the date of receipt for every country. Each State then has twelve months in which it may object. Once communicated, the signs are protected in every State that has not objected.
What the protection means in practice
Countries bound by Article 6ter must refuse or invalidate the registration of trademarks that contain or imitate a protected name or emblem, unless the organization has authorized it. They must also prohibit its unauthorized use as a trademark where that use would suggest a connection with the organization that does not exist, or would mislead the public. In practical terms, no one may legitimately present a business, a diploma mill or a lookalike website under the EUCLID name or emblem.
This also gives students and graduates a simple safeguard. A document that carries the EUCLID name and seal can come from only one source, and anyone who uses them without authorization does so in breach of a treaty obligation applied by national trademark offices around the world.
How to verify it yourself
As with EUCLID's treaty registration and its listing in the IAU World Higher Education Database, nothing here needs to be taken on trust. WIPO's Article 6ter Express database is free and open to the public. A search for "EUCLID" or "Euclid University" returns the communicated name and emblem.
