Now Available: WIPO Academy Annual Review 2020
March 10, 2021
The WIPO Academy has just published its year in review report for 2020 entitled “Sharing Knowledge and Building IP Skills”.
This edition of the report presents the Academy’s achievements in 2020 and highlights the latest developments across programs, including changes in program delivery and format, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Academy’s operations experienced an accelerated digitalization in 2020 in an effort to remain responsive to demands from Member States and WIPO Sectors despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Course participation
The Academy’s participation rates show a continuing increase, with a 24 percent growth in demand compared to 2019, and 175 percent since 2016, having reached nearly 152,000 participants from all WIPO Member States in 2020.
The majority of participants in the Academy’s programs are from academia (45 percent) and the private sector (30 percent), compared to government officials who represented 25 percent of participants in 2020.
The Academy is also proud of its consistent record on gender parity as women accounted for 54 percent of all participants compared to 46 percent for men in 2020.
Programs and projects
The Distance Learning (DL) Program continues to dominate in terms of participation in the Academy’s intellectual property (IP) courses, reflecting the ease of access, flexibility and high quality of the courses offered. In 2020, the DL program ran 330 sessions of DL courses in over 10 languages, including the six official United Nations languages for nearly 150,000 participants. The offerings under the DL Program continued to expand in 2020 through the addition of new practical training courses on a range of IP areas and blended learning certification programs.
A limited number of WIPO Summer Schools were organized in 2020, primarily adapted for online and hybrid delivery. Thanks to the accessibility and affordability this delivery model offered, it enabled an 82 percent increase in participation as compared with 2019.
The WIPO Joint Master’s Degree Programs also shifted to online delivery, and as a result all participants were able to continue their studies and contribute to a small increase in the number of graduates in 2020. Similarly, the Professional Development Program adapted to an online delivery format, and as a result of the experiences of 2020, has developed a new blended learning format for its courses in 2021.
This year’s report also features in more detail the impact being achieved by the WIPO National IP Training Institutions (IPTI). Since their establishment, the IPTIs have delivered more than 5,000 training activities for over 250,000 participants. In 2020 alone, they organized over 850 training activities for almost 70,000 participants. The majority of participants were from the private sector.
For further information on the Academy’s key milestones from 2020, please consult the report.