World IP Day: Suggested Activities

World Intellectual Property Day is a great opportunity to generate public and media interest in issues relating to intellectual property. While WIPO suggests a general theme each year, it is for individual IP offices and participating organizations to decide how best to use the event in order to make a splash, and to meet their own public awareness raising goals.  See the WIPO Outreach Guides for basic guidance on using events such as World IP Day as part of a public outreach strategy or broader awareness raising campaign.

The following are just a few examples of the sort of activities that might form part of World IP Day celebrations, depending on the messages that you are seeking to convey and the sort of audience you are aiming to reach:

• Stage concerts or other public performances centered around the around the World IP Day theme, with the performers delivering messages which encourage respect for creators and creativity.
• Run essay competitions for young people on themes relating to IP, innovation, piracy and counterfeiting etc.
  
• Mark  intellectual property day in schools with awareness building activities such as invention competitions to solve common problems; IP-related poster competitions: presentations by inventors, authors, musicians on how IP effects them.
  
• Run workshops with local businesses and chambers of commerce on how small and medium-sized enterprises can benefit from using the IP system.
• Involve the media. Work with local newspapers to publish editorials and articles on IP-related themes. Broadcast radio and television discussion programs about  and how to promote and protect creativity and innovation, featuring participants from the creative fields as well as from local IP administrations.
• Hold seminars in universities to build awareness of IP and its benefits among students, faculty and researchers.
• Mount exhibits at shopping malls explaining how consumers benefit from IP systems (for example, how reliable trademarks can ensure consumer confidence, or how pirated or counterfeit goods can cause problems for consumers).
• Hold public debates on "hot" intellectual property issues (such patents and access to pharmaceuticals, illegal file sharing of music on the Internet, the balance between protecting the rights of creators and a healthy public domain etc.)
• Involve science and art museums, with presentations explaining the link between the exhibitions, innovation and IP.
• Work with local inventors' associations to announce invention awards.
  
• Celebrate the works of a notable inventor, artist, designer, entrepreneur etc.
  
• Run workshops to inform specific users or potential users of the IP rights system - artists, performers, photographers, musicians, inventors, entrepreneurs, etc. - of  the rights provided by the IP system and the services available.
  
• Create locally-focused IP day publicity materials, such as posters, brochures, broadcast spots, targeted at specific audiences.
• Have an "open doors" day in the local IP or copyright office.
• Mount an exhibit ion presenting local traditional knowledge and its modern application .