WIPO Director General Francis Gurry welcomed the entry into force of the Marrakesh Treaty which can now begin boosting the number of specially adapted texts for the benefit of blind and otherwise print-disabled people around the world.
The “books for blind” treaty entered into force on September 30, 2016, three months after it gained the necessary 20 ratifications or accessions by WIPO member states.
China joins the ranks of the world’s 25 most-innovative economies, while Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Finland and Singapore lead the 2016 rankings in the Global Innovation Index, released today by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Canada today became the key 20th nation to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, which will bring the Treaty into force in three month’s time on September 30, 2016.
From Shakespeare to selfies, culture has changed over the centuries as creators have adapted new technologies to connect with ever-widening audiences.
But few other shifts have had quite the impact of the digital creation and distribution of art, music, literature and other cultural outputs, which has fashioned new mass audiences while disrupting business models and pressuring many creators’ livelihoods. That’s why World IP Day 2016 is exploring “Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined.”
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry today opened the WIPO Conference on the Global Digital Content Market, outlining the rising stakes for creators and consumers as new technologies create mass audiences but disrupt business models.
Amid the roll-out of hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .GURU, .NINJA and .NYC, trademark owners filed 2,754 cases under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) with WIPO in 2015, an increase of 4.6 % over the previous year.
The United States of America (U.S.) extended its long-standing position as the top source of international patent applications via WIPO amid another strong year of worldwide intellectual property (IP) filing growth, as an electronics manufacturer displaced a watch maker as the leading depositor of international industrial design applications.
WIPO Re:Search has now surpassed 100 members and is just shy of 100 agreements to share intellectual property in the fight against neglected tropical diseases, tuberculosis and malaria - both significant milestones for the consortium as it heads into its fifth full year of operation.
Innovators filed some 2.7 million patent applications to mark another worldwide annual rise in 2014, as application activity in China outstripped the combined total in its next-closest followers, the United States and Japan.