World Intellectual Property Day 2025 - IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP

Catrin Finch

Author Maelor Licence Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons

Jane Lambert

World Intellectual Property Day is an international festival of creativity and innovation on or around 26 April each year. It commemorates the entry into force of the Convention that established the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), Every year the festival, focuses on a different theme. The theme for 2025 is "IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP". According to the WIPO, this year’s World IP Day invites us to explore how IP rights and innovation policies empower creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs to bring fresh ideas to the music industry, safeguarding the work of songwriters, composers, performers, and all those who shape the music that moves us.

In preparation for the day, the WIPO has assembled IP resources and tools for inventors, creators and entrepreneurs relating to music. The featured link at the top of the portal is CLIP which stands for "Creators Learn Intellectual Property".  Other resources include guides on The Global Digital Music Industry, Artists in the Digital Music Marketplace and IP Awareness for Creative Industries and publications on How to Make a Living from Music, Are the best tunes played on the oldest fiddles? Distribution and digitization of recorded classical music and Musical Works and Audio-Visual Works - Collective Management Toolkit. There are also links to "IP success stories in the music sphere" and "Music and IP: Essential Tools for Creators, Inventors and Entrepreneurs."  

Music is an art form in which Wales excels in every genre and at every level.  The Menai Science Park ("M-SParc") has participated in every World IP Day celebration since 2019.  Every year it has held lunchtime seminars on the theme as well as other initiatives to benefit businesses and individuals in Northwest Wales.  M-SParc already participates in Gogledd Creadigol which is a network for the creative industries including music in North Wales.  

The science park was established by Bangor University which also set up the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre an important music venue for Northwest Wales. On 10 Jan 2025 for example it will host the Welsh National Opera's New Year's Celebration in its Bryn Terfel Theatre.  On 18 Jan 2025, it will stage Gig Teulu with Meinir Gwilym, Elin Fflur and Buddug in the same auditorium.  Ballet Cymru has performed Tir to the music of Cerys Matthews in the Pontio.  Catrin Finch, whose photo appears above, also wrote the score for the company's Celtic Concerto.

In previous years, M-SParc has invited me to propose a programme for the lunchtime seminar and also to chair it.  Should the science park do so again, I shall invite composers, songwriters and performers from Wales and leading practitioners on copyright,  rights in performances and artificial intelligence from around the world to participate.  I would also try to involve the Pontio and Gogledd Creadigol in the celebrations.

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