Every April 26, we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day to learn about the role that intellectual property (IP) rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity. The theme this year is "Reach for Gold: IP and Sports." Faster, stronger, higher! The drive to test our abilities, the thrill of competition, and the awe we experience in watching ordinary people achieving extraordinary feats, have fueled our fascination with sports for thousands of years. This year’s World Intellectual Property Day campaign – Reach for Gold – takes a closer look inside the world of sports. It explores how innovation, creativity and the IP rights that encourage and protect them support the development of sport and its enjoyment around the world.

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To be noted that the universal values sports encompass – excellence, respect and fair play – power their global appeal. Today, thanks to advances in broadcasting and communications technologies, anyone, anywhere, can follow sporting action around the clock, tracking the performances of their favorite athletes and teams without leaving home.

Sports have become a multi-billion dollar global industry – one that generates investment in facilities (from sports stadia to broadcasting networks), employs millions of people around the world, and entertains many more. Business relationships built on IP rights help to secure the economic value of sports. This, in turn, stimulates growth of the industry by enabling sporting organizations to finance the events we savor, and by providing the means to promote sports development at the grassroots. We look at how sports businesses use patents and designs to foster the development of new sports technologies, materials, training, and equipment to help improve athletic performance and engage fans worldwide.

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