Every year, on April 26, we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day to learn more about the role that intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.

The 2018 theme of World Intellectual Property Day is: Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity.

This year’s World Intellectual Property Day campaign celebrates the brilliance, ingenuity, curiosity and courage of the women who, through their work, are driving change in our world and shaping our common future.

Every day women come up with game-changing inventions and life-enhancing creations that transform and advance human understanding from astrophysics to nanotechnology and from medicine to artificial intelligence and robotics.

And in the creative sphere, whether in the movies, animation, music, fashion, design, sculpture, dance, literature, art and more, women are re-imaging culture, testing the limits of artistry and creative expression, drawing us into new worlds of experience and understanding.

The important and inspired contributions of countless women around the globe are powering change in our world. Their “can do” attitude is an inspiration to us all. And the remarkable achievements are invaluable legacy for young girls today with aspirations to become the inventors and creators of tomorrow.

More than ever before, women are taking up leadership and making their voices heard in the science, technology, business, and the arts. That is good news. With women and men working together, we strengthen humanity’s hand, and improve our ability to enrich our shared cultural wealth and develop effective solutions to alleviate poverty, boost global health, and safeguard the environment.

The time is ripe to reflect on ways to ensure that increasing numbers of women and girls across the globe engage in innovation and creativity, and why this is so important.

This year’s World Intellectual Property Day celebration is an opportunity to highlight how the intellectual property system can support innovative and creative women in their quest to bring their amazing ideas to market.

World Intellectual Property Day is marked since 2000, and April 26 represents the day on which the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (1970) came into force.

Source: http://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/index.html.