WIPO

WIPO works under United Nations and is one of the specialized agencies. It is located in
Geneva, Switzerland. Main theme of this organization is to promote creativity and innovation to
add value to social and cultural development of all countries around the globe.
WIPO stands for World Intellectual Property Organization. Intellectual property (IP) has to be
clearly defined in order to understand the crux of this organization. There was a time when IP
was considered to be related to technical experts, but now it has revolutionized to be the focus of
many societies, organizations, scientists, governments and for individuals. The keys to expose
human potential are creativity and knowledge. And now the countries are using these key factors
are used for economic growth and development. IP is basically divided into two categories;
1. Industrial Property
2. Copyright and Related Rights
Industrial property includes patents for inventions, trademarks, industrial designs and
geographical indications.
Copyright and related rights cover literary and artistic expressions (e.g. books, films, music,
architecture, art), plus the rights of performing artists in their performances, producers of
phonograms in their recordings, and broadcasters in their radio and television broadcasts.
Intellectual property rights allow the creator or the owner of a patent, trademark, or copyright
to benefit from his or her own work or investment in a creation.
WIPO was established on the motive to protect individual intellectual property throughout the
world by cooperation of different states and collaboration of other organizations. The need of
WIPO came forward after the incident when numerous exhibitors from around the world denied
to participate into International Exhibition of Inventions in Vienna held in 1873 as they were
feeling unsafe about their ideas and they had this fear that their ideas could be stolen and
exposed to other countries. Thus in order to deal with this matter, two new organizations came
into being in order to protect the individuals from such type of incidents, Paris Convention and
Berne Convention. These two joined hands and became BIRPI. In 1970, BIRPI became WIPO.
WIPO is basically focused on three main areas.
(i) Development of international intellectual property law
(ii) Extending its umbrella of help in supporting least developed countries and economies
to build their infrastructure to make IP development plans at national level according
to their needs.
(iii) Services to industry and the private sector to facilitate the process of obtaining
intellectual property protection in multiple countries.
WIPO is working with its 184 member states in order to promote intellectual property all over
the world and to get benefits of an affordable system of IP protection to promote economic
development and creation of wealth.
Long-term plans of WIPO includes to create and establish a broad-based understanding of
intellectual property and respect of intellectual property rights. The organization is also very
keen to reach out to common public to create awareness about how important the value of
creativity and innovation and to confirm their participation in promoting IP culture and respect
for such efforts. According to my point of view, everybody has the right to protect its creation,
innovation and ideas. A person would only feel safe in expressing his/her idea if he/she thinks
that after leaving this podium, no one is going to steal my idea. My idea is internationally
recognized. Same goes for the industries. Their products are internationally recognized and only
they are authorized to make such kind of products. If someone tries to make that, he/she will be
punished by the court of law. This feeling of safety is brought to us by WIPO.
References
"Francis Gurry is appointed Director General of WIPO - News Archive 2008". Wipo.int. Retrieved
September 27, 2008.
Quinn, Andrew; Emma Farge (July 24, 2012). "U.S. sees no trade sanctions violations by U.N. agency".
Reuters. Retrieved August 10, 2012.
WIPO. "Treaties administered by WIPO - Consulted June 26, 2013". Wipo.int. Retrieved 2013-
10-18.