Innovative enterprises and individuals around the world overcame the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 to drive WIPO's global intellectual property (IP) services for patents, trademarks and designs to record-setting levels.
China has joined WIPO's Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs, marking a major development for the International Design System, as well as the Marrakesh Treaty, bringing one of the world’s great cultural and literary traditions into the Marrakesh community.
WIPO today launched a new global awards program to recognize enterprises and individuals using intellectual property in an exceptional manner to make a positive impact at home and beyond their own borders.
Worldwide trademark-filing activity boomed in 2020, defying a global economic downturn and signaling vibrant entrepreneurship and the introduction of new goods and services in response to the pandemic.
A range of intellectual property-related indicators showed great resilience despite the economic shock from the COVID-19 pandemic and WIPO's work must evolve to mirror this trend toward the increasing centrality of human innovation and creativity as principal drivers of economic growth, WIPO Director General Daren Tang said in opening the WIPO Assemblies.
Governments and enterprises in many parts of the world scaled up investments in innovation amid the massive human and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Innovation Index 2021 showed, illustrating a growing acknowledgement that new ideas are critical for overcoming the pandemic and for ensuring post-pandemic economic growth.
WIPO Director General Daren Tang presented member states with the vision for the Organization over the coming half-decade, while projecting a healthy near-term financial position and unveiling new efforts to help ensure intellectual property (IP) and WIPO's work help the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Directors General of WHO, WIPO and the WTO, agreed to enhance their support to members battling the pandemic by collaborating on a series of workshops to augment the flow of information on the pandemic and by implementing a joint platform for tripartite technical assistance to member governments relating to their needs for medical technologies. As a result of their meeting on 15 June, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Daren Tang and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala issued the following statement.
WIPO for Creators has welcomed its first partners to the new effort to support creators around the world by ensuring they are recognized and fairly rewarded for their work by increasing knowledge and awareness of their intellectual property (IP) rights.