The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a self-funding specialized agency of the United Nations with 192 member states including the Philippines.

Since 1967, WIPO has been helping governments, businesses and society realize the benefits of intellectual property. As the steadfast partner of WIPO in the Philippines, the partnership has been marked by the following achievements:

1. Philippines’ designation as an International Searching Authority and International Preliminary Examining Authority (ISA/IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty;

2. Establishment of Innovation Technology Support Offices (ITSOs) all over the country, a crucial step in spurring future inventions and innovation;

3. Deployment of the Industrial Property Administration System (IPAS), an IT administration system that fully automated the processing of patent and trademark applications in the IPOPHL; 

4. Accession to the Madrid Protocol, an international agreement that has given Filipino trademark owners a cost-effective and easy access to a global trademark protection system for their trademarks;

5. Institutionalization of the Heads of Intellectual Property Offices (HIPOC) Meeting that has provided the IPOPHL with a venue to interface with heads of other intellectual property offices and collaborate with them on various initiatives, capacity building activities for the IPOPHL, and South-South initiatives that has raised the profile of the IPOPHL as an office with the capacity to render technical assistance to other offices, among others.

These accomplishments are but a fraction of WIPO’s collective contribution that has led to the modernization, and wider utilization of the Philippine intellectual property system.