Reach for Gold: IP and Sports

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.

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.

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.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.

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.

We find out how trademarks and branding maximize commercial revenue from sponsorship, merchandising and licensing agreements. These revenues offset the cost of organizing world class events, such as the Olympic Games and World Cup series, and ensure that the value and integrity of these spectacular events are safeguarded.

We look at how sports personalities are able to generate earnings from sponsorship deals with brand owners and by leveraging their own brands as athletes.

We explore how broadcasting rights underpin the relationship between sport and television and other media that bring fans ever closer to sporting action.

We zoom in on some of the game-changing technological advances in robotics and artificial intelligence that are driving change in all sports fields.

This year’s campaign is an opportunity to celebrate our sporting heroes, and all the people around the world who are innovating behind the scenes to boost sports’ performance and its global appeal.

Join us in celebrating the power of sports to engage and inspire, to innovate and unite us all in pushing the boundaries of human achievement.

Tell us about your sporting heroes and your favorite sports innovation, and share your views on the future of sports.