The WIPO Academy and the Republic of Korea held the annual evaluation and programming meeting for the Korea Funds-in-Trust for Intellectual Property Education (FIT/KREDU) on July 4, 2019 at WIPO Headquarters in Geneva.

 

At the meeting, the WIPO Academy and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) agreed on plans for upcoming intellectual property (IP) training and education activities from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.

 

Past Initiatives

Since the launch of the Academy’s partnership with FIT/KREDU in 2011, WIPO and KIPO have jointly implemented numerous IP training activities to assist developing countries, least developed countries and countries with economies in transition to build their IP capacity. These have included Professional Development training courses on industrial property search and examination in the areas of patents, trademarks and most recently industrial designs. The Academy and KIPO also organize an annual summer school in the Republic of Korea under FIT/KREDU. Additionally, the Academy and KIPO initiated several blended learning IP courses under the Distance Learning (DL) Program including courses targeting IP teachers and business professionals. From July 2018 to June 2019, 258 participants benefited from face-to-face IP training programs and 1,365 participated in the DL and blended courses under FIT/KREDU.

 

Future Activities

WIPO and the Republic of Korea agreed to initiate the following new cooperative projects in 2020:

• Launch of a new Joint Master’s Program in IP and Development Policy, with KIPO, the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management and Sejong City;
• An IP training course for women scientists, including the winners of L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Programme, in the Republic of Korea; and
• The review and update of the IP Panorama course, which consists of 13 modules including a multimedia toolkit on IP management