IP in the news

If you’ve noticed lots of posts on Twitter containing a bunch of coloured boxes, then you have come across the latest word game sweeping (portions of) the internet: a pleasant little brainteaser named Wordle.

They are the 'must have' playground craze of the moment – as simple as they are irresistible. A rubber toy covered in small bumps which can be pushed in and out with a satisfying ‘pop’.

Whether played as a game, a toy, or just used as a soothing way to calm down in these difficult times, pop-its appeared seemingly out of nowhere last year in shops, markets and online.

But this is an overnight sensation more than forty years in the making that owes its recent success to the influence of a capuchin monkey in North Carolina, with a very big social media following.

Novels by Agatha Christie, William Faulkner and all pre-1923 sound recordings

A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, classic novels by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie and hundreds of thousands of pre-1923 sound recordings are among the works that entered that public domain on New Year’s Day 2022, reported Rolling Stone.

Every April 26, we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day to learn about the role that intellectual property (IP) rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity. World Intellectual Property 2022 recognizes the huge potential of young people to find new and better solutions that support the transition to a sustainable future.

Fan art has flourished in the social media age, but not everyone is blessed with the skills to turn their ideas into spectacular — and disturbing — visual creations. The worst offenders hang in galleries of horrors across Reddit and Twitter. Visit them if you dare, but be warned: these cursedimages will be forever imprinted on your brain. Fearful of joining these walls of shame, fan artists are turning to a new AI app for help.

Sports apparel company Adidas has officially launched Originals: Into the Metaverse, a non-fungible token (NFT) collection in partnership with NFT collections Bored Ape Yacht Club, PUNKS Comic, and crypto influencer gmoney. A total of almost 30,000 NFTs will go on sale at a fixed price, with 20,000 available for early access sales to owners of the partner collections. 

The so-called "visoko" multipart folk singing from the villages of Dolen and Satovcha, Blagoevgrad region, South-western Bulgaria, has been listed by UNESCO as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage.

The decision was made at the 16th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The application was presented by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The commissions of the Museum Council selected the nominees for the Estonian Museum Annual Awards, Museum Rats, in nine categories. The winners will be announced on January 28, 2022, this year's conference and gala will be organized by the Estonian Road Museum in Põlva County.

The competition received 93 applications this year, the number of applications has remained stable over the years.