Inventing the future: How WIPO is supporting innovators and creators around the world

Since the dawn of time, humans have been inventing. Some inventions were genius. And some were a little more out there. Over the years, we've seen a few peculiar ones. But every invention, big or small, has shaped the way we live today. But here's the thing. Whether you create something marvelous or mildly bizarre, whether it's digital or physical, your ideas are yours. And protecting them is how we keep innovation moving forward. For everyone. Ingenuity is great. But how do innovators make a living? Enter intellectual property or IP. And that's where we come in. So how does one describe intellectual property. Well, IP. IP. IP. Gives you control over your ideas. It allows them to be rewarded for looking at the world and trying to solve the problems of the world in an innovative or creative way. It incentivizes me to continue creating, to continue researching, investing time and resources into research. Let's take a deeper dive.

The World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO – was born in 1967, but its roots go way back. Think 1800s. The 1883 Paris Convention protected patents for inventions, trademarks for brands, and other IP. And the 1886 Berne Convention protected literary and artistic works. These early treaties set the stage for international IP cooperation. Nowadays, WIPO is a global hub for intellectual property, helping innovators and creators protect their big ideas, be it an invention, a design, a brand, or a work of art. It keeps the global IP system fair and accessible, making it work for everyone, everywhere. So IP is a mark of quality. It's a way to signal to people that you have a great idea that you want to grow and to bring them into your business. Well, let's take for example McDonald's. When McDonald's franchises its brand around the world, it franchises the most important part of their operations, which is the brand, the Golden Arches. And that means that it needs a trademark to be able to do that. And I think that's why IP now has become such an important part of the modern economy. It's in all the big companies. It's in all the startups. And in fact, the global value of intangible assets is in the trillions of dollars right now. WIPO provides a number of services to individuals, to companies. It allows individuals to seek protection in many markets using a single application to WIPO. It cuts down on the bureaucracy that an individual creator or entrepreneur needs to go through in order to protect their product.

In the last few years, over 20 million types of IP were filed in the world. That's at the highest level ever. In the modern world, IP is everywhere. It's in the creative economy. It's in the film industry. It's in the music industry. Let's take for example Afrobeats and the music industry in Latin America, which have become really the biggest revenue earners in music. Take, for example, a musician. If we're going to be streaming all their music all the time without paying any royalties, we lose access to the music that they could have created if their music was protected. They need to be paid royalties. When they copyright their works, that's what ensures that if you stream music on Spotify or YouTube, it's royalties from the copyrighted works that enables musicians to make a living.

No one falls in love with IP, but almost all of us fall in love with those products that we consume. And IP is absolutely critical to bringing each of those products on that journey from the first idea through to ask the audience. WIPO is a UN agency made of 193 member states. We run international registries that support innovators and creators to move the IP across borders. We bring everyone together to talk about IP issues. I think the most important thing is that we need to continue having the human being at the center of the of the IP system. It's such an important part of our DNA, right, that we are innovative and creative. And if we allow ourselves to destroy that or that part to be displaced by machines, I think we lose a very important part of who we are. I think human beings have been inventing and innovating for hundreds of thousands of years from fire to the wheel to stone tools, to agriculture, aqueducts and engineering, to modern day inventions like, you know, the airplane and the car and TV and radio and e-commerce and computers.

Here's some food for thought. What is the greatest invention in human history and why? Well, I'm tempted to say the internet, but I'll go for the smartphone. It's really hard to pick a single invention in human history. Because in my view, the smartphone is really what has made our lives a whole lot easier. Back in the 1700s, life expectancy was less than 30. Today it's more than 70. That is thanks to a huge wave of technologies. Everything from X-rays to antibiotics, which have helped us live longer and to live healthier. Because, for example, if I need entertainment, tap of the phone, I have all the entertainment I need. If I need to connect to the rest of the world. Texting. Video calling. We're together. And that has really contributed to improving the lives of humanity. You look at the car. The car is no longer an industrial machine, but a computer on four wheels. In the face of these technological revolutions, IP must remain human centered.

Technology should support enable, empower the human creator and innovator and not replace, undermine and destroy that. And I think what's going to happen is that AI and other forms of digital technologies will transform and continue to transform the way we work with the way we live and play. And AI is around using huge amounts of data to train a computer to mimic the way in which a human would answer a question. Let me give you the example of the Kente cloth from Ghana. So you can have generative AI that can replicate that design, right? But what would be missing would be the socio-cultural markers that define the history behind the cloth. That is the human element that cannot be replicated by technology. AI right now is not credited as an inventor or creator because we don't think it exhibits original, creative, innovative thought at the level of the human being, at least not yet. So I look at AI not just as a new form of technology, but as part of a larger trend where digital technologies are transforming the world.

So let's review. One. IP has been around for a long time, incentivizing human innovation and creativity. Two. IP gives people the confidence that their works will be protected, shared, and celebrated. And three and most importantly, IP is key to stimulating the inventions of the future that will improve our world. So where do we go from here? Most importantly, our job is to make IP support innovators and creators everywhere in the world. And we do this by making sure that we create all kinds of programs and projects on the ground that are impactful, that help people at the grassroots level to be able to bring their ideas to the market. We need to talk about IP, but we actually really need to talk about the ideas and the products and the brilliance IP releases. We need to show people the value and what it is bringing to the table. And I think that will allow society as we move forward to continue to respect and enhance our IP frameworks.

Innovation is what bridges the distance between the future and now. And intellectual property benefits don't only benefit the creator, but they also benefit the society at large. So by safeguarding creativity, what we are doing is ensuring that creators continue to create and consumers continue to enjoy. I think the human instinct to imagine and to make the world a better place has shaped the world for millennia. Everything we see around us starts with an idea, a sense of what could be different. And I think what the IP system does is to help the idea become reality, to make the world a better place. Here's to us humans, to our brilliance, our imagination, and our drive to solve problems. We've come this far through ingenuity, vision, and the courage to push beyond limits. Let's not only celebrate what we've achieved but dare to dream bigger.