Around 1,400 delegates from WIPO’s member states registered to join the WIPO Assemblies, which ran from July 9 to 17, 2024, the largest number ever.
IPA attended an NGO meeting with Director General Tang where he presented his outlook on WIPO’s work and his belief that IP is no longer just for experts but is of interest to society at large. The session covered an overview of WIPO’s work, a look at how IP can be used to tackle climate change, a review of the recently adopted new WIPO Treaty and, of course, a focus on artificial intelligence. On AI, Tang underlined that ‘IP created to put the human innovator at the centre’ before speaking about empowering creators to see AI as an opportunity not a threat, ‘Gen AI is here to enhance, empower, enable, support the creator.’ He affirmed ‘I don’t see how an industry can take content for free. It’s just not sustainable.’
Back in the plenary chamber, the Member States considered the different reports on the different WIPO committees’ work over the last year. They welcomed the report on the SCCR and suggested that the WIPO Director General allow for 2 SCCR meetings in WIPO’s 2025 schedule.
The Assemblies were also another opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary (read more about that here) of the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) which earlier in the month had reached one million titles available for cross-border exchange under the framework of the Marrakesh Treaty following the signature of an agreement with the Royal National Institute of the Blind in the UK.
The ABC Excellence Awards nominations are open until 16 September. The award ceremony will take place a the 34th International Publishers Congress in Guadalajara. More information on the Congress here. More information on how to submit a nomination here.
WIPO’s CLIP (Creators Learn Intellectual Property) initiative also started sharing shout out videos from different artists with guitarist Nile Rodgers’ sharing the first. The CLIP initiative has focussed on music first and will go on to look at other creative sectors in the future.
In other WIPO related news, the Toolkit on Preservation adopted during SCCR will be launched at an event in Bogotá, Colombia on 2 and 3 September 2024.
