What Is WIPO And What You Should Know About It?

WIPO is an abbreviation for "World Intellectual Property Organization" and was established in 1970.  It became a specialized agency of the United Nations, such as WHO, WHO, etc, in 1974 and Japan joined in 1975.

WIPO is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has a variety of missions, but in a word it has the job of setting the direction of global intellectual property policy. There are 193 member countries (as of 2020) in WIPO. The secretary-general as of 2021 is Mr.Darren Tan. There is a WIPO Japan office in Tokyo.

The predecessor of WIPO is BIRPI (Bureau Internationaux Reunis pour la Protection de la Prorpiete Intellectulle). BIRPI was established in Bern, Switzerland in 1893. The first secretary-general was Georg Bodenhausen, who was well-known among patent practitioners and more widely as a legal scholar on the Paris Convention. Mr. Boden Hausen was from the Netherlands.