Minister Ahern Welcomes World Intellectual Property Day - 26th April 2007

The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has designated the 26 April of each year as World Intellectual Property Day. The key theme for this year is “encouraging creativity”.

In welcoming World Intellectual Property Day, Minister for Trade and Commerce Mr. Michael Ahern said: “There is no doubt that the Irish economic success story over the last two decades has been built in no small part on our ability to be creative and innovative. As the WIPO choice of the creativity theme underlines, there is a clear linkage between creativity and intellectual property rights that deserves to be more widely recognised.

“I welcome this opportunity on World Intellectual Property Day to remind all of the importance of intellectual property and indeed the role which encouraging creativity plays in this context.

“Despite our success in the area of intellectual property innovation, enormous potential remains especially in the small and medium enterprise sectors, for the development and use of intellectual property rights such as patents, trade marks and copyright. As we move towards a knowledge–based economy, it is a potential we must exploit more effectively.

“All sizes of firms can benefit from more creative use of intellectual property whether they be a smaller and newer enterprises or a multinational firm operating successfully in this country”.

Continuing Minister Ahern said: “The government is playing its part in promoting this process in various ways. Within the past year we have acted to further protect and enhance the position of authors and artists in Ireland through regulation in this field. Last year, I introduced a scheme whereby artists can now benefit when their works are re-sold at public auction and, in the case of writers, just two weeks ago I published a Bill with proposed amendments to our Copyright legislation which paves the way for royalties to be paid to their authors when books are loaned through our public libraries.”

“The rate at which we generate new intellectual property rights is increasingly important for our economy’s continued growth. Many other countries actively promoting the growth of their economies are equally alert to the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR)”, Minister Ahern added.

Concluding, Minister Ahern also welcomed the comments made by Dr Kamil Idris, the Director General of WIPO who said “World intellectual property day provides an opportunity for people of all nations to reflect on the importance of creativity and innovation in building a better world”.