WIPO - Annual celebration of #worldipday 26th April

Every April 26, WIPO celebrates the World Intellectual Property Day to enhance public awareness on the role that intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.

The 2017 theme focused on the importance of innovation in making lives of human beings healthier, safer, and more comfortable.

As WIPO website states, "Innovation means doing something new that improves a product, process or service". Innovations can be protected through intellectual property (IP) rights.

Inventions are the bedrock of innovation. An invention is a new solution to a technical problem and can be protected through patents. 

Patents protect the interests of inventors whose technologies are truly groundbreaking and commercially successful, by ensuring that an inventor can control the commercial use of their invention. 

An individual or company that holds a patent has the right to prevent others from making, selling, retailing, or importing that technology. This creates opportunities for inventors to sell, trade or license their patented technologies with others who may want to use them. 

The criteria that need to be satisfied to obtain a patent are set out in national IP laws and may differ from one country to another. WIPO Lex is the unique archive gathering together legislative texts of national laws and international treaties on intellectual property.

But generally, to obtain a patent an inventor needs to demonstrate that their technology is new (novel), useful and not obvious to someone working in the related field. Further information on the role of innovation and on the way WIPO protects novel technologies through he registration of patents can be found on the WIPO website here.

More of 300 events have been held worldwide to celebrate the #WorldIPDay