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Let’s celebrate Intellectual Property Day! 🎉📚 Protecting creativity and innovation fuels progress. Join us in recognizing the value of ideas! 💡✨ #IPDay #Creativity #Innovation #IntellectualProperty https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-8oN

World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated annually on April 26. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) established the day on October 3, 2000, to raise public awareness of the impact of patents, copyright, trademarks, and designs on everyday life and to celebrate the creativity and contributions of creators and innovators to the development of economies and societies around the world. April 26 was chosen as the date for World Intellectual Property Day because it coincides with the 1970 entry into force of the Convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization. World Intellectual Property Day is WIPO’s largest public outreach campaign on intellectual property (IP).

Background

In a statement to the 33rd Session of the Assemblies of the Member States of WIPO in September 1988, the Director General of the National Algerian Institute for Industrial Property (INAPI) “suggested that an International Intellectual Property Day be instituted.” In a subsequent letter to the WIPO Director General dated 7 April 1999, Mr. Amor Bouhnik, Director General of INAPI noted that the aim of establishing such a day “would be to set up a framework for broader mobilization and awareness, to open up access to the promotional aspect of innovation and to recognize the achievements of promoters of intellectual property throughout the world.”

On August 9, 1999, in a letter from Jiang Ying, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese delegation proposed that WIPO adopt the day commemorating its 30th founding anniversary (April 26) as World Intellectual Property Day, on an annual basis. The Commissioner noted that the objective was “to further promote awareness of intellectual property protection, expand the influence of intellectual property protection worldwide, urge countries to publicize and popularize intellectual property protection laws and regulations, enhance public awareness of intellectual property rights, encourage invention and innovation activities in various countries, and strengthen international exchanges in the field of intellectual property.”

In October 1999, at its twenty-sixth session, the WIPO General Assembly approved the idea of declaring a specific day as World Intellectual Property Day.

WIPO Member States’ participation in World Intellectual Property Day has steadily increased since its inception in 2000. In its first year, 59 Member States reported official World Intellectual Property Day events. Five years later, in 2005, 110 countries reported official World Intellectual Property Day events , and in 2022, the campaign involved 189 Member States.

International events

Every year, IP offices, law firms, businesses, students and other organizations organize hundreds of events around the world to honor inventors and creators and raise awareness about the intellectual property system and its associated rights (e.g., copyright, trademarks, patents, designs, trade secrets, plant varieties, etc.).

World Intellectual Property Day events are an opportunity to explore different aspects of the intellectual property system and how innovators, creators, and businesses can use it to add value to ingenuity and creativity. It is also an opportunity to highlight the role the IP system plays in supporting economic, social, and cultural development for the benefit of everyone, everywhere.

At its core, the IP system seeks to balance the interests of inventors and creators with those of the general public by granting time-limited rights that meet pre-established conditions in international treaties negotiated by WIPO Member States.

During the validity period of the rights (which varies depending on the right in question), the owner of that right enjoys exclusive prerogatives. This means that they can determine who may or may not exploit their work and the conditions under which they may do so.

After this period, the IP-protected work enters the public domain and can be used by anyone without the obligation to seek prior authorization from the rights holder. WIPO is responsible for leading the development of a balanced intellectual property system. The laws governing intellectual property at the international level are enshrined in various international treaties administered by WIPO.

These international treaties have been negotiated by Member States since the birth of the international IP system in 1883, following the adoption of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The Paris Convention and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, adopted in 1886, are the pillars of the international IP system and the foundations of the International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI), the organization that preceded WIPO before the entry into force of the Convention establishing WIPO in 1970.

Although World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated annually on April 26, many countries observe it on another date. Some, like Peru and Singapore, organize a week of celebrations, while others, like Algeria, hold events over the course of a month. While WIPO selects a theme and develops a series of promotional materials around it, each country can develop its own national campaign based on local needs.

Nearly 600 events are planned for World Intellectual Property Day 2022 around the world, addressing topical issues related to the campaign theme, from comic book protection in Peru to IP and blockchain. World Intellectual Property Day is also an opportunity for key policymakers to highlight intellectual property and its importance for regional and national economic development.

In the framework of World Intellectual Property Day 2022, a panel discussion on the theme Innovate for Better Health: Supporting Youth Innovators through IP was also held, organized in collaboration with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, with the support of Geneva Health Forum and Speak Up Africa, which brought together young innovators, entrepreneurs, and mentors from Cameroon, Colombia, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines, as well as several international experts. This was followed by a musical program featuring music by Anaïs, Kathyta Fuentes, LUVANGA, and Stogie -T.

On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day 2022, the first World Intellectual Property Day Youth Video Contest was also held.

In his report to the WIPO Assemblies in July 2022, WIPO Director General Dareng Tag said:

I’m also pleased to report that this year’s World Intellectual Property Day attracted record global participation. The theme was “IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future,” and there were more than 15 million impressions on our digital platforms and nearly 600 World Intellectual Property Day-related activities across 189 Member States—the highest participation in our history.

Topics

• 2001: Creating the Future Today
• 2002: Encouraging Creativity
• 2003: Make Intellectual Property Your Business
• 2004: Encouraging Creativity
• 2005: Think, Imagine, Create
• 2006: It Starts with an Idea
• 2007: Encouraging Creativity
• 2008: Celebrating innovation and promoting respect for intellectual property
• 2009: Green Innovation
• 2010: Innovation – Linking the World
• 2011: Designing the Future
• 2012: Visionary Innovators
• 2013: Creativity – The Next Generation
• 2014: Movies – a Global Passion
• 2015: Get Up, Stand Up, For Music
• 2016: Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined
• 2017: Innovation -Improving Lifes
• 2018: Powering Change: Women in Innovation and Creativity
• 2019: Reach for Gold: IP and Sport
• 2020: Innovating for a Green Future
• 2021: IP and SMEs: Taking Your ideas to market
• 2022: IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future
• 2023: Women and IP: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity
• 2024: IP and SDGs: Building ur common future with innovation and creativity
• 2025: Intelectual property and music: Feel the beat of IP

Controversies

This event has been criticized by a number of intellectual property activists and scholars as one-sided propaganda in favor of traditional copyright, ignoring alternatives related to copyleft and the free culture movement. Mike Masnick of Techdirt wrote that World Intellectual Property Day is intended “to promote ever greater protectionism and mercantilism in favor of copyright holders and patent holders, while ignoring any impact on the public of those things. It’s a fairly disgusting distortion of the claimed intent of intellectual property.” Zak Rogoff of Defective by Design noted that it is a “global but decidedly not grassroots event”. It has also been criticized by activists from civil society organizations such as IP Justice and the Electronic Information for Libraries who consider it one-sided propaganda as the marketing materials associated with the event, provided by WIPO, “come across as unrepresentative of other views and events”. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, noted that “World Intellectual Property Day has become little more than a lobbyist day”. Cushla Kapitzk from the Queensland University of Technology wrote that most of the WIPO’s statements related to promotion of the World Intellectual Property Day are “either exaggerated or unsubstantiated”; noting that for example one of WIPO’s claims used to promote this event, namely that “copyright helps bring music to our ears and art, films and literature before our eyes” is “tenuous at best, and lexical association of copyright with things recognised as having social and cultural value (‘art’, ‘film’ and ‘literature’) functions to legitimate its formulation and widespread application”.

A number of grassroots-supported observances in opposition of prevalent IP laws celebrated by the World Intellectual Property Day exist, none of them supported by WIPO:

• Culture Freedom Day
• Document Freedom Day
• Hardware Freedom Day
• International Day Against DRM
• Public Domain Day
• Software Freedom Day

References :

• Kapitzke, Cushla (1 December 2006). “Intellectual Property Rights: Governing Cultural and Educational Futures”. Policy Futures in Education.
• Ricketson, S. (2015). The Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property. A Commentary. Oxford University Press.

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