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In November 2016, WIPO adopted an Open Access Policy in support of its commitment to the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and to make its publications easily available to the widest possible audience.
WIPO believes that a fundamental purpose of a balanced and effective intellectual property (IP) system is to provide frameworks and incentives that encourage the creation, dissemination and use of works of the human mind for the economic, cultural and social benefit of all.
WIPO takes a leading role in facilitating universal access to the wealth of knowledge and technology information generated by the international IP system. As the world reference source of IP-related information, WIPO also makes available extensive collections of publications, data, studies, reports, and learning resources. WIPO’s Open Access Policy formalizes this commitment to knowledge-sharing, providing more streamlined access to these resources, and enabling policymakers, researchers, practitioners and the general public to easily use and build upon them.
Under the Open Access Policy, while retaining ownership of the copyright on its content, WIPO facilitates access to its online publications and to other online content published under WIPO’s name, without payment, and minimizes the conditions or restrictions placed on the use of its content.
To support the implementation of the Open Access Policy, WIPO applies Creative Commons (CC) licenses. CC licenses are a set of copyright tools and model agreements that facilitate open access to creative content.
Except for some content published under more restrictive terms, new WIPO online publications and other online content are issued under an Attribution 4.0 International CC license (CC BY 4.0). This allows anyone to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform content published online under WIPO’s name, without explicit permission, provided that such use is accompanied by an acknowledgement that WIPO is the source, and clearly indicates if changes are made to the original content.
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WIPO retains full copyright ownership of all material unless otherwise specified.
This Open Access Policy is not applicable to third party content. When content published by WIPO contains material that belongs to one or more third-party right holders, including, for example, images, graphics, trademarks or logos etc., anyone wishing to use such content is solely responsible for clearing the rights to that material with the right holder(s).
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