Real Property

In 2006, the Government centralized the processing of residential real estate transactions through a network of notary offices under the Ministry of Justice. Since 2013, Azerbaijan’s State Real Estate Registry Service at the Committee for Property Issues has been the lead agency managing the real estate registration system. In April 2016, Azerbaijan’s President approved amendments to the Law on Immovable Property Register. The amendments cut the period of registration of property rights and the provision of extracts from the Register from 20 to 10 working days.

Amendments to the Law “On State Registration of Real Estate” (the “Law”) dated November 14, 2016 are intended to simplify the state registration of residential houses. According to the new edition of Article 8.0.9.1. of the law, the state registration of houses requires only the document certifying property rights of the owner of the land where the house is situated.

The World Bank’s Doing Business Report includes Azerbaijan in its country rankings on the Ease of Registering Property. Rankings are available at: http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/azerbaijan/#registering-property . Azerbaijan ranked 22nd out of 189 countries in this category in 2015.

Intellectual Property Rights

Since 1996, Azerbaijan has implemented a national system to register and protect intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights in Azerbaijan include all rights to industrial property (including inventions, industrial designs, utility models, trademarks, geographic names, and domain names) and copyright and related rights. Current legislation pertaining to intellectual property includes the Law on Copyrights and Related Rights (the Copyright Law), the Law on Trademarks and Geographic Designations (the Trademark Law), the Law on Patents (the Patent Law), the Law on the Topology of Integrated Microcircuits, the Law on Unfair Competition (the “Unfair Competition Law”) and the Law on Securing Intellectual Property Rights and Combating Piracy (the “Anti-Piracy Law”). The legal structure covering intellectual property protections in Azerbaijan is relatively strong, but experts note the level of enforcement within the country is weak. Piracy and blatant infringements on intellectual property rights, such as fake international computer shops that are open for business in the capital, are commonplace. The Business Software Alliance put the software piracy figure at 85% in 2013. Moreover, the estimated value of unlicensed software in Azerbaijan was $103 million in 2013, compared to $52 million in 2009.

Azerbaijan is a party to the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Paris Convention for Protection of Industrial Property, and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Azerbaijan is also a party to the Geneva Phonograms Convention and acceded to the two WIPO Internet treaties in 2005. Violation of intellectual property rights can result in civil, criminal, and administrative charges.

Azerbaijan tracks and reports on seizures of counterfeit goods but does not publish statistics on this effort.

Table 3: Sources and Destination of FDI

Table 4: Sources of Portfolio Investment