World Intellectual Property Day 2023
World Intellectual Property Day is taking place on the 26th of April. This year’s theme of World is ”Women and IP: Accelerating innovation and creativity”, and so it is a day to celebrate innovative, creative and enterprising women around the world and to focus on much needed changes in attitudes and possibilities. We took the opportunity to ask Ström & Gulliksson’s European Patent Attorneys, Sofia Willquist and Maria Weineisen, why it is so important to protect intellectual property rights and for their personal reflections and thoughts on female inventors.
Initiated by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated every year on the 26th of April. This global campaign offers a unique annual opportunity to join with others to celebrate inventors and creators around the world and to explore how IP contributes and drives innovation that helps shape our world.
For Sofia Willquist, intellectual property rights are crucial for creating value in a company.
– Intellectual property is an important tool, both for companies’ business opportunities but also for increasing opportunities for cooperation and technology exchange with other parties. Companies that think visionarily about their intellectual property and create rights that they can use are often successful.
Maria Weineisen agrees that intellectual property rights benefit us all in the long run. She says that they offer a way to share technology in a controlled manner and in a way that creates value, not only for the owner of the right, but also possibly for those who benefit from it through a license.
– Intellectual property is a way to protect the result of an intellectual achievement. Just as you own and can use or sell a painting you have painted or a hammer you have made, you should have the right to control your idea and invention. The “price” you pay for this exclusive right is that you tell the world about your invention and share your newly acquired knowledge. This exchange of knowledge drives technological development and leads to new, even better inventions and solutions to problems.
“To drive development forward, we need diversity in everything”
Sofia and Maria find the theme of this year’s World Intellectual Property Day to be extremely relevant and timely. They share the view that there is a pressing need to increase the number of female inventors and patent holders, which can only be achieved through greater diversity and more visible role models.
– I personally believe that many of the innovations where women are the main inventors will solve the social and climate problems we have today. Female entrepreneurs must continue to push themselves, attract investors and continue to act as role models for new generations of female entrepreneurs, says Sofia, who finds the statistics on female entrepreneurship disappointing.
– Almost a third of all new businesses are started by women, and Sweden is actually below the EU average (according to Företagarna 2021). When it comes to investments, this is also a very disappointing statistic. On the one hand, surveys show that women are generally more cautious about raising external capital, and on the other hand, it is a vanishingly small part of invested capital that goes to technology companies founded by women. In 2020, they accounted for less than 1% of the almost SEK 44 billion invested in the sector.
– We already see that a large proportion of students on technical university courses are women. This in itself will lead to more women in all technical fields, says Maria, who believes that through role models this change can be even faster.
Maria and Sofia share the belief that to effectively address the challenges of today, it’s crucial to involve individuals with diverse experiences and perspectives. They recognize that by bringing together people with varying backgrounds and ideas, we can identify innovative solutions and achieve better outcomes.
– For women to become engineers, entrepreneurs or patent attorneys, or to dare to believe and invest in their own inventions, role models are needed. Young people are looking for recognition and need to say “Look! There’s an engineer or inventor or entrepreneur like me.” That said, it shouldn’t lead us to think it is particularly cool or exotic to have a female inventor. We need to get to the point where we don’t react to the fact that it’s a woman. Or really when we completely ignore the person’s gender, skin color, religion, sexual orientation or background. To drive development forward, we need diversity in everything, not just gender. Only then will we have succeeded, says Maria Weineisen.
World IP Day Gallery
The World Intellectual Property Day Gallery features women from around the world who are forging new horizons with their groundbreaking ideas – get inspired!