World Intellectual Property Organization

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established by the WIPO Convention, signed in Stockholm in 1967 and entering into force in 1970. It became a UN specialized agency in 1974 through an agreement with the UN General Assembly. WIPO is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and its membership is open to any state party to one of the IP conventions it administers or any member of the UN.

WIPO traces its institutional roots to the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI), created in 1893 to administer the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883) and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886). Today WIPO administers more than two dozen treaties, including:

• The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which allows applicants to file a single international patent application.
• The Madrid System for the international registration of trademarks.
• The Hague System for industrial designs.
• The WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), both adopted in 1996 to address digital-era copyright.
• The Marrakesh Treaty (2013) facilitating access to published works for persons who are blind or print-disabled.

WIPO is governed by a General Assembly, a Coordination Committee, and a Secretariat led by the Director General. The agency is unusual within the UN system in that it is largely self-financed through fees paid by users of its international registration systems, particularly the PCT, rather than relying primarily on member-state assessments.

Beyond treaty administration, WIPO provides arbitration and mediation services (notably for domain-name disputes under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy), capacity-building for developing countries, and policy forums such as the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights and the Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore.