Can a Muslim own — and sell — a brand, a patent, or a copyright?

WHY INTANGIBLES MATTER TO A RIBA-FREE INVESTOR. Most of the corpus is about how you hold wealth without riba — a murabahah instead of an interest loan, a sukuk instead of a bond, takaful instead of conventional insurance. But a growing share of real wealth is not a house or a share certificate at all: it is a brand, a trademark, a book, a piece of software, a patented invention, a domain-name business. Can a Muslim own such intangible ('incorporeal') assets? May a halal business or fund buy and sell them for a price? And is copying someone else's brand or pirating their work actually a wrong in Shariah, or merely against the local law? Resolution No. 43 (5/5), adopted at the OIC Fiqh Academy's 5th session in Kuwait City (1-6 Jumada al-Ula 1409H / 10-15 December 1988), is the Academy's settled, three-point answer — and it answers all three questions with a clear yes.

THE POSTPONED QUESTION THAT BECAME THIS RULING. Res 43 did not arrive out of nowhere. One session earlier, Resolution No. 32 (7/4) ('Sale of the Trade Name and License', 4th session, Jeddah, 1988) had looked at whether you could sell a trade name and, finding 'a confusing multiplicity of issues and conflicting opinions', POSTPONED the matter. Crucially, it asked that the topic be widened. Verbatim (official Res 32): 'To include the issue of the Sale of the Trade Name and License in a broader subject, such as Incorporeal Rights so as to be able to introduce other related concepts, including copyright, patent rights, inventor's rights, author's rights, industrial and commercial design patents and trademarks, etc. under one heading'. The official edition's own footnote to that line points forward to 'Resolution no. 43 (5/5)'. So Res 43 IS the settled resolution of the question Res 32 deferred — which is also why the two editions title it differently: the IRTI edition keeps the label Res 32 asked for ('Incorporeal Rights'), while the official edition prints it as 'Moral Rights' (both render the Arabic al-huquq al-ma'nawiyya). This is the corpus's familiar deferral-then-decision pattern, here fully internal to the Academy's own text.

WHY THE ACADEMY RULED. The Council issued the resolution 'Having examined the research papers of the Academy's members and experts concerning Moral Rights' and 'Having listened to the discussions on the subject' (IRTI edition: 'Having reviewed the papers presented by the Members and experts concerning \"Incorporeal rights\" and after having listened to the discussions on the subject'). So this is a considered, research-backed ruling, not an off-the-cuff opinion. It then 'Resolves' three operative points.

FIRST — INTANGIBLE RIGHTS ARE REAL, TRADABLE PROPERTY. The Academy states the foundation in a single sentence. Verbatim (official): 'Business name, corporate name, trade mark, literary production, invention or discovery, are rights belonging to their holders and have, in contemporary times, financial value which can be traded. These rights are recognized by Shariah; therefore, not permissible to violate.' (IRTI: '...are rights belonging to their holders and have, in contemporary times, financial value which can be traded. These rights are recognized by Shari'a and should not be infringed.') Three things are load-bearing here. (a) The list is broad — it spans commercial marks (business name, corporate name, trade mark), creative work (literary production), and technical originality (invention or discovery). (b) These are 'rights belonging to their holders' with 'financial value which can be traded' — the Academy expressly recognises them as property (mal) with tradable value, not as mere reputations or courtesies. The qualifier 'in contemporary times' is honest: it acknowledges that treating a trademark or a copyright as a financial asset is a modern development, and rules that Shariah recognises that value as it now exists. (c) Because the right is 'recognized by Shariah', violating it is a Shariah wrong, not merely a breach of statute — the official edition says it is 'not permissible to violate' (IRTI: 'should not be infringed'). For a riba-free investor this is the primary-source basis for treating brand equity, IP and creative output as genuine assets on a halal balance sheet, and for treating counterfeiting or piracy as a real transgression of another's protected right.

SECOND — YOU MAY SELL OR TRANSFER A NAME OR MARK FOR A PRICE. Having established that these are financial rights, the Academy confirms they can change hands commercially. Verbatim (official): 'It is permissible to use and transfer a business name, corporate name, trademark for a price in the absence of any fraud, swindling or forgery, considering that it has become a financial right.' (IRTI: 'It is permitted to sell a business name, corporate name, trade mark for a price in the absence of any fraud, swindling or forgery, since it has become a financial right.') The permission is explicit but conditioned. (a) The transaction is lawful precisely because the mark 'has become a financial right' — the sale/transfer is of a recognised asset, not of thin air, which is what keeps it clear of the sell-what-you-do-not-own and excessive-gharar problems that dog other novel trades. (b) The condition is integrity: 'in the absence of any fraud, swindling or forgery'. A brand or mark sold to deceive — passing off, counterfeiting, forging a mark to ride on another's goodwill — falls outside the permission. Note the genuine wording difference the editions preserve: the official edition permits you to 'use and transfer' the mark, the IRTI edition to 'sell' it; both make the same point that a name or mark is a right you may deal in for value. For a founder or fund this is the licence to value and monetise a trademark or trade name — to sell a brand, assign a mark, or price it in an acquisition — provided the deal is honest.

THIRD — COPYRIGHT AND PATENT ARE PROTECTED. The Academy closes by naming the two categories a modern creator or inventor cares about most. Verbatim (official): 'Copyrights and patent rights are Shariah protected rights. Their holders are entitled to freely exploit them. It is not permissible to violate such rights.' (IRTI: 'Copyrights and patent rights are protected by Shari'a. Their holders are entitled to freely dispose of them. These rights should not be violated.') Two load-bearing points. (a) Copyright and patent are 'Shariah protected rights' — the strongest phrasing in the resolution: the protection is a matter of Shariah, so infringing a copyright or a patent is a wrong in itself. (b) The holder 'is entitled to freely exploit them' (IRTI: 'freely dispose of them') — i.e. to license, sell, assign or otherwise commercialise the right as its owner. For a riba-free investor or creator this settles that software, books, music-free content, research, designs and inventions are ownable, licensable, sellable assets under Shariah, and that pirating them is not a grey area but a violation of a protected right.

The official edition closes 'Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing.' (IRTI: 'Verily, Allah is All-Knowing').

HOW A RIBA-FREE INVESTOR ACTUALLY USES THIS. (a) Intangibles are real assets: a trademark, a brand, a copyright, a patent, a book or a piece of software can sit on a halal balance sheet as property with tradable financial value — point one is the primary-source basis for valuing them. (b) You may buy and sell them: a business name, corporate name or trademark may be transferred for a price (point two), so brand sales, mark assignments and IP line items in an acquisition are permissible — as long as the deal carries 'no fraud, swindling or forgery'. (c) Licensing IP is squarely contemplated: point three says holders may 'freely exploit' their copyrights and patents, which is exactly what a licence does. (d) Respecting others' IP is a Shariah duty, not just compliance: counterfeiting a brand, pirating software or a book, or forging a mark violates a 'Shariah protected right' — a consideration for any halal business sourcing goods or content. (e) Do not over-read it: Res 43 establishes that these rights EXIST and are tradable and protected; it does not resolve every downstream detail (for example, the precise fiqh treatment of every licensing structure or the duration of protection), and it certifies no particular company, product or contract.

WHERE THIS SITS IN THE CORPUS. Resolution 43 is the corpus's anchor for INTANGIBLE / INCORPOREAL PROPERTY — the ruling that a right without a physical body (a brand, a mark, a copyright, a patent) is nonetheless mal (property) with tradable value. It completes the arc begun by the postponed Resolution No. 32 (7/4), and it underpins later Academy work that treats such rights as assets — the official edition later carries a resolution on the 'Waqf of Shares, Sukuk, Moral Rights, and Benefits', which presupposes exactly the moral-rights-are-property holding settled here. It sits alongside the corpus's sale-contract rulings (what may be sold and how) and its property-and-ownership themes generally. The cross-links here are this corpus's own mapping of where an incorporeal-rights ruling sits, offered as navigation, not as claims made by Resolution 43 itself.

GENUINE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO EDITIONS (disclosed, not smoothed). The two translations agree on all three operative points while differing in wording — a CLEAN pairing, reported honestly. TITLE: official 'Moral Rights' versus IRTI 'INCORPOREAL RIGHTS' (two renderings of the same Arabic al-huquq al-ma'nawiyya; the official edition's own Res 32 text and footnote use 'Incorporeal Rights' for the same forthcoming ruling). ACADEMY NAME: official 'the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Organization of the Islamic Conference' versus IRTI 'the Islamic Fiqh Academy'. SESSION LINE: official 'holding its 5th session in Kuwait City, State of Kuwait, on 1-6 Jumada al-Ula 1409h (10-15 December 1988)' versus IRTI 'holding its Fifth session, in Kuwait-City (State of Kuwait), from 1st to 6th Jumada al-Oula 1409 H (10 to 15 December 1988)'. PREAMBLE: official 'Having examined the research papers of the Academy's members and experts concerning Moral Rights' versus IRTI 'Having reviewed the papers presented by the Members and experts concerning \"Incorporeal rights\"'. FIRST POINT: official 'recognized by Shariah; therefore, not permissible to violate' versus IRTI 'recognized by Shari'a and should not be infringed'. SECOND POINT: official 'It is permissible to use and transfer a business name... trademark for a price' / 'considering that it has become a financial right' versus IRTI 'It is permitted to sell a business name... trade mark for a price' / 'since it has become a financial right'. THIRD POINT: official 'Copyrights and patent rights are Shariah protected rights' / 'entitled to freely exploit them' / 'It is not permissible to violate such rights' versus IRTI 'Copyrights and patent rights are protected by Shari'a' / 'entitled to freely dispose of them' / 'These rights should not be violated'. CLOSING: official 'Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing.' versus IRTI 'Verily, Allah is All-Knowing'. SPELLING throughout: official 'Shariah' versus IRTI 'Shari'a'. Every verbatim quote used above was machine-checked against both source PDFs (line-wrap, hyphenation, inserted-page-number and diacritic aware, whitespace-normalised, 21/21 OK).

AN HONEST NOTE ON WHAT IS AND IS NOT HERE. This is a settled operative ruling — three decisive points recognising incorporeal rights as tradable Shariah-protected property — not a deferral. The quoted parts are the resolution's own words; the framing question ('can a Muslim own and sell a brand, patent or copyright?'), the finance/founder examples (brand equity, IP on a balance sheet, licensing, counterfeiting/piracy), and the investor how-to are plain restatements and honest applications of the resolution's own three points, not new rulings added by this site. The resolution cites no Qur'an verse and no hadith number, records no madhab tally and no vote count, and names no bank, product, figure or rate, so none is reported here. The link to Resolution No. 32 (7/4) is stated in the Academy's own text (Res 32 postpones the topic to the 5th session and asks for the 'Incorporeal Rights' heading; the official edition's footnote names 'Resolution no. 43 (5/5)'). The forward cross-links to later Academy work on the waqf of moral rights and to the corpus's property/sale themes are this corpus's own navigation, not claims made by Resolution 43 itself.