World Intellectual Property Day 2024.

World Intellectual Property Day (WIPD) is observed annually on 26 April. The World Intellectual Property Organization AKA WIPO established the event in 2000. The event was raised to “raise awareness of how copyright, patents, designs, and trademarks impact us in daily life” and “to celebrate creativity and the contribution made by innovators and creators to the development of economies and societies across the globe.” The date 26 April was chosen to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day as the day also coincides with the date the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization came into force in the year 1970. The event World Intellectual Property Day is WIPO’s largest intellectual property (IP) public outreach campaign.

History of World Intellectual Property Day.

The earliest records pertaining to Intellectual Property dates all the way back to the 6th century BCE. It is yearlong supposedly given to bakers to make their inventions invention. As a matter of speaking, the rise of Intellectual Property originated from the rise of bread.

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Granting exclusive rights is a culture into which our modern society was born. However, knowing that the intellectual property rights has been in existence for millennia shows us about our valuation of individual talents. Although the ancient Greeks still considered the individual inventions and creations as gifts from the gods, recognizing and celebrating the human part of the innovation and creation process proves that we are very similar to our distant ancestors.

International events

Each year, hundreds, if not thousands of events are organized around the world by law firms, IP offices, students, private companies, and others to celebrate creators and inventors and to promote understanding of the intellectual property system and the rights associated with it (e.g., copyrights, patents, trade secrets, design rights, trademarks, plant variety rights).

Even though World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated every year on 26 April, many countries celebrate Intellectual Property Day in various days. Some, including Singapore and Peru, organize a week long event regarding World Intellectual Property Day week, while others, such as Algeria, roll events out that run for a month. While WIPO identifies various themes and produces a range of promotional materials around it, each country may develop its national campaign in line with local needs.

In association with UNESCO and Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), WIPO celebrated World IP Day 2023. 

In collaboration with the Permeant Mission of Peru to the International Organizations in Geneva, WIPO also hosted the “Film Industry: A Woman’s Perspective” event. The award winning film “Un Mundo para Julius / A World for Julius” was screened during the event. The event also featured d a discussion with Rosanna Díaz Costa, the director. She shared her insights on the film industry from a woman’s perspective.

For World Intellectual Property Day 2022, more than 500 World Intellectual Property Day events were recorded across the world on various issues relating to the theme of campaign IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future, ranging from the protection of comics in Peru to IP and the blockchain. World Intellectual Property Day is also an opportunity for leading policymakers to express their support for it and highlight its relevance to regional and national economic development.

World Intellectual Property Day 2022 also featured a panel discussion on Innovating for Better Health: Supporting Young Innovators through IP, which was organized in collaboration with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) with the support of the Geneva Health Forum and Speak UP Africa, which brought together young innovators/entrepreneurs and mentors from various countries and international experts—World Intellectual Property Day 2022 also featured the first World Intellectual Day Youth Video Competition. In the Report of Director General Daren Tang to the Assemblies of WIPO in July 2022, WIPO Director General said, I am also happy to report that World Intellectual Property Day attracted record global engagement. Themed around ‘IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future,’ we recorded over 15 million impressions across our digital platforms, and there were nearly 600 World Intellectual Property Day events across 189 Member States, our most extensive participation ever.

Themes

Each year, the campaign is rolled out around a topical theme:

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

Criticism

This event has been criticized by several scholars and intellectual property activists 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 the Defective by Design noted that it is a “global but decidedly not grassroots event.” Activists from civil society organizations such as IP Justice and the Electronic Information for Libraries have also criticized it. They consider 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 from the University of Ottawa, stated, “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 the promotion of World Intellectual Property Day are “either unsubstantiated or exaggerated,” noting that, for instance, 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 recognized as having cultural and social value (‘film’, ‘literature’ and ‘art’) functions to legitimate its formulation and widespread application.”

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