World Intellectual Property Day is observed annually on 26 April. The event was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 to raise awareness of how patents, copyright, trademarks and designs impact on daily life and to celebrate creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies across the globe".
26 April was chosen as the date for World Intellectual Property Day because it coincides with the date on which the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization entered into force in 1970.
This event has been criticized by a number of activists and scholars as one-sided propaganda in favour of traditional copyright, ignoring alternatives related to copy left and the free culture movement.
Following a statement made at the Assembly of the Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in September 1998, the Director General of the National Algerian Institute for Industrial Property (INAPI) proposed on 7 April 1999 the institutionalization of an international day for intellectual property, with the aim of setting up a framework for broader mobilization and awareness, [opening up] access to the promotional aspect of innovation and [recognizing] the achievements of promoters of intellectual property throughout the world."
On 9 August 1999, the Chinese delegation to the WIPO proposed the adoption of the World Intellectual Property Day in order to further promote the awareness of intellectual property protection, expand the influence of intellectual property protection across the world, urge countries to publicize and popularize intellectual property protection laws and regulations, enhance the public legal awareness of intellectual property rights, encourage invention-innovation activities in various countries and strengthen international exchange in the intellectual property field.
In October 1999, the General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) approved the idea of declaring a particular day as a World Intellectual Property Day.
Mike Masnick of Techdirt wrote that World Intellectual Property Day is intended to promote ever greater protectionism and mercantilism in favour of copyright holders and patent holders, while ignoring any impact on the public of those things. It's a fairly disgusting distortion of the claimed intent of intellectual property."
Zak Rogoff of the Defective by Design noted that this event is a global but decidedly not grassroots event".
This event has also been criticized by the activists from civil society organizations such as IP Justice and the Electronic Information for Libraries who consider it one-sided propaganda as the marketing materials associated with the event, provided by WIPO, "come across as unrepresentative of other views and events".
Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, noted that "World Intellectual Property Day has become little more than a lobbyist day.
Cushla Kapitzk from the Queensland University of Technology wrote that most of the WIPO's statements related to promotion of the World Intellectual Property Day are "either exaggerated or unsubstantiated"; noting that for example one of WIPO's claims used to promote this event, namely that copyright helps bring music to our ears and art, films and literature before our eyes is tenuous at best, and lexical association of copyright with things recognized as having social and cultural value (‘art’, ‘film’ and ‘literature’) functions to legitimate its formulation and widespread application".