Pop the champagne: today is World IP Day

In case you wonder why the masses are dancing in the street: today is World Intellectual Property day! This being the age of social media, there is of course also a World IP day Facebook page.

The moto of this year's celebrations is "designing the future", hoping to raise awareness that besides patents, trademark and copyright, there is that other intellectual property right, the registered design. The UK IPO celebrates the day with a special website.

The Nigerian IPO, on the other hand, submitted a poster to WIPO (depicted), but still does not have a website. Other examples of publicity material from various countries can be found on WIPO's website and provide an interesting glimpse into different cultures. Contrast Kenya's entry from 2002 with Korea 2006, and you get an impression of what I mean. Kenya's Intellectual Property Office, btw, officially has a website, but it seems unavailable. No points for guessing that the website of South Korea's IPO is not only up and running, but looking very professional and automatically redirecting users with English set as default browser language to the English language version of the page.