On Thursday, October 3, 2024, a high level LESI delegation met with officials and staff at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in key offices. The group made up of LESI board members and committee leaders recieved updates from WIPO on current and upcoming activities and discussed how WIPO and LESI could work together to execute on shared goals.

The current Director General, Darren Tang from Singapore, has put a priority on IP commercialization and has said he hopes to have LESI be a critical partner in building and improving resources to support commercialization. When he assumed office in 2020, he immediately made some organizational changes creating an organization unit relevant to LES that focused on the IP and Innovation Ecosystem.

This is the first such delegation visit for LESI at WIPO in recent years and reflects a growing interest by both organizations to work together. Yet, LESI has had other recent interactions with WIPO, including in September when LESI Executive Director Dana Colarulli met with Assistant Director General Marco Aleman while he was visiting Washington, DC and specifically discussed the WIPO Inventor Assistance Program to which LESI has now became an official partner. LESI President Elect JC Troussel met with DG Tang this past July at a roundtable in Geneva with other IP professional groups.

­ LESI has signed MOUs with WIPO twice in recent years, the most recent of which was signed by then LESI President Audrey Yap in 2021 (a previous agreement was signed by then LESI President Pat O’Reilly in 2010).

In relevant part, the 2021 MOU between LESI and WIPO focuses on three areas for collaboration:

1. Development of Training Programs on IP in general and commercialization of IP

2. Meetings and Educational Events – identity opportunities for speakers and/or jointly organize events

3. Creation of a work-plan / share information on policies focused on enabling commercialization and well- functioning IP ecosystems

During this delegation meeting, the group met with various staff in WIPO’s Global Challenges and Partnerships Sector (including WIPO Green and Climate Change and Food Security), staff from the Innovation Ecosystem Sector (including the IP Commercialization Section and the Inventors Assistance program, as well as WIPO’s Chief Economist and representatives from the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).