intellectual property

The WIPO Photography Prize for Indigenous Peoples and Local Community Youth 2021-2022 (the Photography Prize) aims to celebrate the creativity of indigenous and local community youth, as well as raise awareness on how copyright can be used to protect their photographs.

So much preparation goes into each iteration of the Olympics that host nations often begin this work more than five years before the actual event. Protecting the Intellectual Property (IP) associated with the games is a critically important yet often unsung part of this planning.

On 29 December 2021, under the framework of the European Cooperation Project (ECP8) ‘European Network of Authenticities’, the city of Madrid (Spain) became the sixth certified ‘Authenticity’ of the network, following the Authenticities of Thessaloniki, Sofia, Plovdiv, Mykonos and Banská Bystrica.

Following an agreement signed between the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office and the Municipality of Madrid, a series of IP-related awareness-raising activities will take place locally over the next two years in the newly certified Authenticity.

From "Squid Game" to Olive Garden, the NFT boom is an orgy of intellectual property infractions.

The most popular show in Netflix history, “Squid Game,” earned an estimated $900 million for the streaming company. And the producers are not stopping there. They are gearing up for even more revenue as they look towards season two and have secured more than two dozen trademarks for the property as they tee up a range of merchandising and licensing deals.

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.

The history of intellectual property (IP) is closely interlinked with that of technology. Among the innovations that have disrupted our daily lives in the broadest sense – from how we keep in touch with others to how we shop, from how we meet our romantic partners to how we work and study – the emergence of the internet is likely to be regarded as the most relevant one. Naturally, IP has also been affected by and has sought to react to the novel issues that this new medium has been raising. Let’s go over some of them then!

Copyright … trapped in the net?

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed a new type of cooling cube that could revolutionize how food is kept cold and shipped fresh without relying on ice or traditional cooling packs. 

These plastic-free, “jelly ice cubes” do not melt, are compostable and anti-microbial, and prevent cross-contamination. 

“When ice melts, it’s not reusable,” said Gang Sun, a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. “We thought we could make a so-called solid ice to serve as a cooling medium and be reusable.”