The Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) celebrates, along with the whole international community, the World Intellectual Property Day (WIPD), observed on April 26th of each year. The WIPD was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 to raise awareness of the importance of the right to intellectual property (IP) and its role in encouraging creators and producers of intellectual and artistic works to embrace further creativity and innovation in all fields.
The 2021 WIPD theme, “Intellectual Property & Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: Taking Your Ideas to Market”, focuses on the pivotal role of IP rights in helping SMEs to build more effective and competitive businesses and stimulate them to penetrate the global market relying on their own capacities and innovative ideas. This falls in line with the new global trends which focus on startups and SMEs and their significant role in the development of global economy.
ALECSO’s celebration of WIPD is part of its principled engagement with all initiatives designed to promote creativity within ethical and legal frameworks that protect IP rights in terms of patents, trademarks, designs and copyrights, and to adopt a common vision that involves increasing awareness of these rights and working to further develop the relevant legislation.
ALECSO believes that supporting innovation and creative thinking within effective IP systems will certainly help address common global challenges, attract investments in all fields, and stimulate creators to further develop their ideas and innovations. It takes this opportunity to call on investors and actors in cultural industries and creative economy in the Arab countries to further enhance IP ethics and legislations and to explore and monitor new trends in creative economy, in order to keep pace with new global policies aimed at creating further investment and employment opportunities and achieving sustainable development goals.
Adhering to IP laws and ethics, spreading IP culture, and protecting IP rights can only help generate added economic value, improve the socioeconomic conditions of countries and societies, open up new prospects for the continued development of production, innovation and creativity skills, enhance competitiveness among countries, and support the knowledge-based economy.
ALECSO will continue to work on developing IP systems in cultural and creative industries and in artistic and heritage-related fields; the aim being to push toward adopting national and regional strategies that support creators and guarantee their rights, and thus build a new generation of leaders, program developers and startups in all fields, and promote investment and job creation, especially in the field of culture and heritage.
