World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO - was established by a WIPO Convention in 1967, and became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1974. WIPO is headquartered in Geneva.

Activities

WIPO's purpose is to promote respect for intellectual property worldwide.

Intellectual property comprises two main branches:

1. industrial property (inventions, trademark and design)
2. copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, cinematographic and other artistic works).

The work of the WIPO consists of

• administering international conventions
• developing international standards
• promoting modernization of national legislation in the protection of intellectual property
• collecting and disseminating information
• organizing meetings and seminars
• providing legal and administrative support to Member States.

WIPO is working closely with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Structure

WIPO is governed by a General Conference, composed of all member states, and a General Assembly, composed of state members of the Paris convention (Protetction of industrial property) and Berne Convention (Protection of literary and artistic works).

The highest public servant of the WIPO is the Director-General.

More on WIPO

• The WIPO Convention.
• The WIPO website provides multilingual background information and news, full text conventions, documents and reports, WIPO standards and statistics:
  • The WIPO Magazine.
  • WIPO-Administered Treaties.
• Intellectual property (IP) databases:
  • Patents: PATENTSCOPE
  • Trademarks: Global Brand Database
  • Designs: Global Design Database
  • Laws and treaties: WIPO Lex, free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property (IP) such as treaties administered by WIPO.
  • Statistics: WIPO IP Statistics Data Center
  • Intelletctual Property Statistics

• WIPO Library supports your intellectual property (IP) research.