World Intellectual Property Day – April 26, 2017
Innovation – Improving Lives
Every April 26, we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day to learn about the role that intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.
This year, we’ll explore how innovation is making our lives healthier, safer, and more comfortable, turning problems into progress. We’ll look at how the intellectual property system supports innovation by attracting investment, rewarding creators, encouraging them to develop their ideas, and ensuring that their new knowledge is freely available so that tomorrow’s innovators can build on today’s new technology.
Every day, ordinary people are producing extraordinary new things to change the world for the better.
Their innovations take myriad forms, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous: A billboard in Peru that harvests water from the air, supplying the local community with clean drinking water; a 3D-printer at an American university that regenerates damaged human tissue; a mobile money transfer and microfinancing service from Kenya, renewable energy solutions that power fridges in rural India; a graphene battery from China that charges a mobile phone in minutes; cutting-edge assistive technologies from the Russian Federation to help people with disabilities perform everyday tasks.
Problems to progress
From new medicines and materials to improved crop varieties and communications, innovation is making our lives healthier, safer, and more comfortable.
Innovation is a human force that knows no limits. It turns problems into progress. It pushes the boundaries of possibility, creating unprecedented new capabilities.
World Intellectual Property Day 2017 celebrates that creative force. We’ll explore how some of the world’s most extraordinary innovations have improved our lives; and how new ideas are helping tackle shared global challenges, such as climate change, health, poverty and the need to feed an ever-expanding population.
We’ll look at how the intellectual property system supports innovation by attracting investment, rewarding creators, encouraging them to develop their ideas, and ensuring that their new knowledge is freely available so that tomorrow’s innovators can build on today’s new technology.
Your turn
Which innovation has most improved your life? What more can be done to make sure new technologies reach the people who need them? What do you think should be the priorities for future innovation?
Join the conversation: #worldipday
Get involved!
- Join the conversation on social media using hashtag #worldipday
- Send us details of your events for the World IP Day events map
- Post your photos and posters on Facebook
- Download campaign materials from our social media kit
Innovation – Improving lives
Intellectual property quiz
How much do you know about intellectual property basics? Take our quiz to find out!
The space is the limit
“Innovation is one of the drivers why we fly to space” – European Space Agency Astronaut Frank De Winne.
Inventions that make a difference...
Innovators speak
Tristan Vouga, inventor of an exoskeleton
Consuelo Cano Gallardo, inventor of a downhill skateboard
Dr. Munir, inventor of an arsenic water filter
Erick Rajoonary, agriculture entrepreneur
Arthur Zang, inventor of a cardiac care tablet
Herman Moeliana, inventor of rapidly degrading eco bags
Stefania Isidori, inventor of remote-controlled snow chains
Bruno Castillón Lévano, inventor of a newborn incubator and resuscitator
IP and innovation
Improving lives across the globe
A closer look at the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Patents for Humanity awards program. How it works and what it does.
Smart solutions to global challenges
Dr. Özge Akbulut talks to WIPO Magazine about her work and the challenges of innovation in an emerging economy.
The CRISPR-Cas9 battle
The race to develop commercial applications for the CRIPSR-Cas9 gene-editing tool promises to revolutionize medicine and agricultural research. But who controls this ground-breaking technology?
In depth
Innovation and intellectual property
Many innovations can be protected through IP rights. What are these rights and how do they support inventors and improve lives?
What lies beneath biopharmaceuticals
Corey Salsberg, Vice President and Global Head of IP Affairs at Novartis explains that there is much more to pharmaceutical innovation than meets the eye.
Lighting up lives
Nokero is transforming livelihoods in developing countries with low-cost, eco-friendly solar-powered lights.
Reviving communities with branding
Chilean producers are adding value to heritage products and breathing new life into their communities.
Patent information
Learn how to use the wealth of technology information in patent documents.
Publicity materials download
- Poster 1
| Poster 2 | Poster 3 | Poster 4 | Poster 5 | Poster 6 - Bookmark
- Postcard
- Pictogram
- Animated GIF #1 | Animated GIF #2 | Animated GIF #3 | Animated GIF #4 | Animated GIF #5
All PDF files are print-ready.
These materials can only be used for the purpose of the World IP Day 2017 campaign. Modified World IP Day campaign materials can be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public in any form only for non-commercial purposes.
More about World IP Day
In 2000, WIPO's member states designated April 26 – the day on which the WIPO Convention came into force in 1970 – as World IP Day with the aim of increasing general understanding of IP.
Since then, World IP Day has offered a unique opportunity each year to join with others around the globe to consider how IP contributes to the flourishing of music and the arts and to driving the technological innovation that helps shape our world.