WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It was established by the WIPO Convention, signed in Stockholm in 1967, which entered into force in 1970. WIPO became a UN specialized agency in 1974 through an agreement with the UN, and it succeeded the earlier United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI), which had administered the Paris and Berne Conventions since the late 19th century.

WIPO's mandate is to promote the protection of intellectual property (IP) worldwide through cooperation among states and with other international organizations, and to administer multilateral IP treaties. Among the most important instruments it oversees are:

• The Paris Convention (1883) on industrial property.
• The Berne Convention (1886) on literary and artistic works.
• The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) (1970), which allows a single international patent application.
• The Madrid System for international trademark registration.
• The Hague System for industrial designs.
• The WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (both 1996), often called the "WIPO Internet Treaties."
• The Marrakesh Treaty (2013) facilitating access to published works for persons who are blind or visually impaired.

WIPO is governed by a General Assembly of member states and led by a Director General; Daren Tang of Singapore took office in October 2020. The organization also operates the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, which handles domain name disputes under the UDRP, and the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), a long-running negotiating forum.

For Model UN and IR researchers, WIPO is central to debates on access to medicines, the TRIPS-WIPO relationship, digital copyright, AI and authorship, and the protection of indigenous knowledge.