World Intellectual Property Day 2007 - Encouraging Creativity
Geneva,
April 24, 2007
PR/2007/489
This year’s World Intellectual Property Day on April 26, 2007 highlights the intrinsic link between creativity and intellectual property (IP). In his message to mark the seventh World IP Day, Dr. Kamil Idris, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), stresses the importance of encouraging creativity. The incentives built into the IP system encourage inventors and artists to mine their talents and thereby drive technological advances and enrich our collective cultural heritage.
Dr. Idris released the following message:
"Each year on April 26, governments and organizations around the world join WIPO in celebrating World Intellectual Property Day. Our theme this year is encouraging creativity.
For many people, the connection between intellectual property and creativity is far from obvious. The word creativity conjures a world of artists and music makers, of poets and problem solvers, whereas intellectual property all too often summons images of gray-suited lawyers, locked in litigation. But look more closely, and it quickly becomes clear that it is the intellectual property system itself which sustains and nourishes those creators.
Everywhere we look, we see images of intellectual property in action:
- in the color and drama of a box office hit from Bollywood, providing entertainment and employment for countless people;
- in the songs of a rising star from Mali, whose CD sales transport African rhythms to listeners around the world and help him earn a living from his music;
- in the vision of a non-profit non-governmental organization, which develops an engineer’s patented device for bringing clean water to isolated villages;
- in the intricate weaving of an Iranian carpet, bearing a registered mark to show its authenticity;
- in the latest trend-setting accessories from a Japanese design team;
- in new medical treatments based on innovative research in China, in Jordan, in Cuba;
- in the best-seller written by a young mother, which brings magic to millions, launches dozens of careers, and earns untold revenues from film and merchandising rights.
Encouraging creativity – rewarding the creative, innovative talents on which our world and our future are built – these are the ends which intellectual property serves. This is what drives WIPO’s work. This is what makes World Intellectual Property Day a cause for celebration."
Background: WIPO’s member states initiated World IP Day in 2000 to raise public awareness of the role of IP in daily life, and to celebrate the contribution made by innovators and artists to the development of societies across the globe. April 26 was chosen as this was the date on which the Convention establishing WIPO entered into force in 1970.
Activities: A summary of World IP Day activities organized this year in WIPO member states, plus a web gallery of IP Day posters and materials from round the world, is available at https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/world_ip/2007/index.html
- Tel: (+41 22) 338 81 61 / 338 72 24