The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Massimo D'Alema, signed an agreement in Rome on September 10, 2007, which strengthens Italy’s commitment to consolidate and reinforce its contribution to the activities of WIPO. The agreement formalizes Italy’s long-standing support of WIPO’s activities relating to economic development, and makes Italy one of the largest contributors of extra budgetary resources to WIPO.
The second in a series of public symposia on the life sciences and intellectual property will be held on Wednesday, September 19, 2007, at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and will address current issues in intellectual property and public health, an area that has sparked international debate and attention in recent years.
Questions such as how authors, composers and artists receive payment for use of their work in the digital economy and new opportunities for managing creators’ rights electronically will be the focus of discussions at a conference organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from October 17 to 19, 2007, at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America. Key issues such as the impact of new services and business models – file-sharing, pod casting, streaming and Internet video services – future technological trends, licensing techniques, fee structures and distribution and measures to combat illegal downloading, will all be addressed by participants at the Conference on Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights in North America, which is open to the public.
Geneva-based Permanent Representatives members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) attended a retreat organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on September 5, 2007 for an in-depth review of topical issues on the international intellectual property agenda. The meeting provided a forum for representatives of the OIC group to exchange views on matters of particular interest to their economic development.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on September 3, 2007, launched the seventh session of the Master of Laws (LLM) in Intellectual Property, a joint post-graduate program in intellectual property (IP) offered by the WIPO Worldwide Academy, the University of Turin and the International Labour Organisation, International Training Center (ILO-ITC), at the ILO-ITC in Turin, Italy. Thirty three students from around the world are participating in the 2007/2008 program.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is organizing a series of symposia in the coming months, at its Geneva headquarters, to clarify the intellectual property (IP) dimension in the life sciences. They are addressed to a wide range of stakeholders, including international policymakers, government agencies, legislators, delegates, private sector and civil society actors.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is hosting a Seminar on Rights Management Information at its Geneva headquarters on September 17, 2007. Rights management information (RMI) consists of metadata used to identify digital content and owners of rights, and to express licensing information in digital form. The seminar will explore the relevance of RMI, survey emerging technologies and standards, and identify challenges affecting copyright owners, Internet users and intermediaries such as search engines. The seminar will also address crucial questions such as ownership, licensing and management of IP as well as the tools used to manage creative content and identify users and owners.
The 2007 edition of the Patent Report of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (https://www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/statistics/patents/patent_report_2007.html) shows that worldwide filings of patent applications have grown at an average annual rate of 4.7% with the highest growth rates experienced in North East Asian countries, particularly the Republic of Korea (ROK) and China. The report is based on 2005 figures, the last year for which complete worldwide statistics are available. It showed that patents granted worldwide have increased at an average annual rate of 3.6% with some 600,000 patents granted in 2005 alone. By the end of 2005, approximately 5.6 million patents were in force worldwide.
Museums, and the broader cultural heritage community, now have access to a new guide, commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to help them use the intellectual property (IP) system to improve the management of their collections in the digital environment.
Finance executives, managers and analysts can, from August 1, 2007, register on-line at www.wipo.int/academy/en/execed to participate in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Executive Program on Strategic Intellectual Property (IP) Finance, which will be held at WIPO headquarters, in Geneva, from November 12 to 15, 2007.