Saturday, April 26, 2008 marks the ninth annual World Intellectual Property Day. Begun in 2000 by the World Intellectual Property Organization, World IP Day aims to illustrate the benefits of and cultivate respect for IP. WIPO’s Director highlights this in a message noting that IP development and protection contributes to new technologies and an overall richer human experience for everything from the means to tackle global warming to watching the world wide broadcast of the Olympic games, and that IP nurtures human creativity, while fostering cultural, economic, and social development. From the telegraph to the Internet, IP increasingly connects the world.
Each country celebrates World IP Day in its own way, and a list of scheduled activities can be found here; a list of suggested activities such as concerts, essay-writing contests, and general awareness-building activities can be found here. A gallery of past and present artwork celebrating World IP Day is available here (this year’s poster here).