While browsing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website looking for something of particular interest to write about, I came across the “Conferences, Meetings and Seminars” webpage. This particular webpage “provides access to information about meetings held at WIPO and related documents comprising a detailed meeting calendar and a powerful document search facility.” These two items (the calendar and document search tools) are new to me and I felt that they would be worth sharing with you.

First, the “Calendar of Events” webpage is a tool whereby a user can identify all upcoming WIPO events held in Geneva, Switzerland, or in other places around the world. The calendar shows one month at a time, and lists all events (hyperlinked) to be held that month, and on the individual days when the event takes place, those days are also hyperlinked for the user’s convenience. In this month alone, WIPO is hosting three (3) events in Geneva and is hosting fourteen (14) other events across the world in countries such as Egypt, Paraguay, Brazil, Cameroon, and others. I note that two meetings start today (December 13th): the “WIPO-KIPO ASIA REGIONAL SEMINAR ON USING IP PANORAMA FOR BUILDING CAPACITY OF SMES FOR STRATEGIC IP MANAGEMENT” in Seoul, South Korea, and the “WIPO-JIPA Conference on the Strategic Use of Intellectual Property (IP) in Select Industries” seminar in Tokyo, Japan. Once the individual events are selected, the user may download available seminar information in multiple formats.

Second, the “Search Meetings and Documents” webpage is a tool whereby a user can search and access a plethora of available documents contained within the WIPO seminar database. Meetings can be searched based on the individual meeting codes, keywords in titles, meeting dates, and countries where the meetings were held. In addition, seminar documents can be searched based on individual document codes, keywords in titles, the document author, the language the document is written, as well as a full text search of the document itself. An advanced search is also available for a user to search specific areas of documents for keywords and to search documents excluding specific terms. If you are seeking background information on a specific area of intellectual property, I recommend performing a search using this useful tool.

WIPO Conferences, Meetings and Seminars Webpage: LINK
WIPO Calendar of Events Webpage: LINK