General: Patents and trademarks can be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office. Syria is a signatory to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and to the Madrid Agreement concerning the suppression of false statements of origin.

Patents: Law No. 62 of 1944 and Law No. 47 of 1946, amended by Legislative Decree No. 28 of 1980, provide that a patent is valid for a period of fifteen years from the date of application, but an extension of its validity is possible. Renewal fees must be paid every year for the first five years and then consecutively for each five year period thereafter. Working of a patent within two years of its grant is compulsory, and working of a patent within three years of filing the application is compulsory in order to claim priority.³⁰

Trademarks: Protection for trademarks is provided under Legislative Decree No. 28 of 1980. It grants protection for ten years from the date of registration and is renewable for ten year periods thereafter. The international classification of goods and services is followed in Syria for trademark registrations. The use of trademarks in Syria is not compulsory for filing applications for registrations nor for maintaining trademark registrations in force.

Trademark applications are examined initially to determine that the mark is not identical to or closely resembles previously registered trademarks covering the same goods or services. Thereafter, the applicant may be requested by the Boycott of Israel Office to provide a declaration regarding the Arab boycott of Israel. Failure to provide the boycott declaration will result in delay in registration. Once the file is complete and cleared, the Trademark Office registers the trademark immediately.²⁹

Copyright: Law No. 12 of February 27, 2001. Which protect the copyright for the author and gives him the right to publish such work and any amendment to it and to select the means of publishing. The ministry of culture is in charge of enforcing this law, and the copyright is reserved for the author lifetime and fifty years thereafter. This law protects all written works (books, booklets, brochures….), artistic works (theatrical and musical, whether in digital encrypted form or not, cinematography, broadcast…), works of plastic and applied arts and photography, works of drawings, geographic maps…etc, works of computer software to include design documents and data thereof.³¹

Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE), the Syrian operator attached to the ministry of communications, has been granted authorization by IANA to assign names under .sy domain since July 2002.³³

The second level domain name, available under .sy, includes:³²

All domain name registration applications are served on a "first-come first' serve" basis. Domain names can be registered for immediate usage or for future use (parking).

Any legal disputes shall be forwarded to the courts and are governed by the Syrian law and regulations. Once a court order is issued to cancel the domain name AGIP will abide by the order to cancel or amend a name. Once registered to an entity, domain names are non-transferable unless said entity is bought out or merges with another entity. If an entity is dissolved, the domain names owned by that entity shall be reallocated.³²

A registration cost of $60 per year is charged for one domain name registration. For organizations with a leased line connection through STE, the cost of the domain name is included in the yearly subscription.³³

The Syrian government is taking active measures to keep its citizens from freely accessing the Internet and obtaining international political, religious, and economic ness and information. They aggressively block and censor the Internet via proxies.³⁵

Some of the blocked URLs,  The entire .il (Israel) domain is blocked, all the email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo are blocked and the Syrian Human Rights Committee, http://www.shrc.org/. ³⁴

Although there is no official piracy rates in Syria, but a shopper in the local market can discover quickly that Syria is a "one copy country" for most of the software.