World Intellectual Property Day is
an opportunity to celebrate the contribution that intellectual property makes
to innovation and cultural creation – and the immense good that these two
social phenomena bring to the world.
It is an opportunity to create
greater understanding about the role of intellectual property as a balancing
mechanism between the competing interests which surround innovation and
cultural creation: the interests of the individual creator and those of
society; the interests of the producer and those of the consumer; the interest
in encouraging innovation and creation, and the interest in sharing the
benefits that derive from them.
This year the theme of World IP Day
is visionary innovators – people whose innovations transform our lives.
Their impact is enormous. They can, at times, change the way society operates.
Take the Chinese innovator, Cai Lun.
He laid the foundations for the manufacturing of paper - a technology that
transformed everything, because it enabled the recording of knowledge. Then
there was the invention of moveable type. This was taken up in Europe by
Johannes Gutenberg with his invention of the printing press, which in turn
enabled the dissemination and democratization of knowledge. In our own
lifetimes we have witnessed the migration of content to digital format, and the
great distributional power for creative works that has been brought about by
the Internet and the development of the World Wide Web – for whom we have to
thank, among others, Tim Berners Lee.
Behind many extraordinary
innovations there are extraordinary human stories. At a time when there were
few female scientists, Marie Curie Sklodowska had to struggle to establish
herself as a scientist in her own right as opposed to the wife of a scientist.
She also struggled as an immigrant working in another community. Her desire to
understand led to the fundamental discoveries for which she was awarded two
Nobel prizes in two separate disciplines - in physics and in chemistry - the
only person ever to have achieved this.
In the arts, innovation revolves
around new ways of seeing things. A visionary artist or a composer or a writer
is able to show us a different way, a new way of looking at the world. Bob
Dylan, for example: he captured what was in the air and transformed several
genres of music, essentially bending the genres of folk and rock music. Or
consider architects – like Zaha Hadid or Norman Foster - who are transforming
urban landscapes, and beautifying our existence in new ways, while at the same
time taking into account the need to preserve the environment.
We are dependent upon innovation to
move forward. Without innovation we would remain in the same condition as a
human species that we are in now. Yet inventions or innovations - in the health
field for example – are of relatively little value to society unless they can
be used and shared. This is the great policy dilemma. On the one hand, the cost
of innovation in modern medicine is enormous. On the other hand, the need for
compassion, and the need for sharing useful innovations, is also enormous.
I believe we should look upon
intellectual property as an empowering mechanism to address these challenges.
But we have to get the balances
right, and that is why it is so important to talk about intellectual property.
On this World Intellectual Property Day I would encourage young people in
particular to join in the discussion, because intellectual property is, by
definition, about change, about the new. It is about achieving the
transformations that we want to achieve in society.
Francis Gurry,
Director General
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
