World Intellectual Property Day



WIPO's poster for World IP Day



Today is World Intellectual Property Day. The member states of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, started "World IP Day in 2000 to raise public awareness about the role of IP in daily life, and to celebrate the contribution made by innovators and creators to the development of societies across the globe. World IP Day is celebrated annually on April 26, the date on which the Convention establishing WIPO entered into force in 1970."

This year's World Intellectual Property Day, Designing the Future, "celebrates the role of design in the market-place, in society and in shaping the innovations of the future." Visit the World Intellectual Property Day Facebook page to see comments from participants around the world.




Canada's posters for World IP Day





A World IP Day poster from Ecuador



Speaking of IP, did you know that the law library has several research guides to help you get your bearings in this field?

• Trademark Law Resources: Primary Sources (follow the links in the upper right corner for Foreign & International, Online Sources, and Secondary Sources)
• Patent Law Resources
• Research in Copyright Law

 For a general discussion of Intellectual Property Research in an international context, see Jonathan Franklin's ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law: International Intellectual Property Law.

BNA has a number of great resources (UW restricted) for keeping up with and researching IP law.





BNA's IP databases



Most of these are newsletters where you can browse or search recent developments.  UW law school users may also subscribe to them via email.

The Intellectual Property Law Resource Center is, as the name suggests, a site with lots of different resources. You can search cases, statutes, regulations, secondary materials, and "BNA Insights" (commentary by practitioners).  There are even a few short videos! 

BNA has recently added some of its treatises to its online service.  In IP, you can search Robert L. Harmon, Patents and The Federal Circuit (9th ed. 2009) and its 2010 supplement and Harmon on Patents: Black-Letter Law and Commentary.