Over the years, many Wikimedians have formed partnerships with various cultural, educational, and GLAM institutions across numerous countries, working as Wikimedians in Residence to bridge knowledge gaps, and engage these institutions in Wikimedia projects. Wikimedians in Residence have successfully transferred knowledge to different Wikimedia projects using various implementation models and methods.Among the successful partnerships are those with UN agencies, the first of which was UNESCO, where John Cummings became a WIR in 2015. UN agencies possess a vast repository of knowledge in their archives, including documents, photos, artifacts, and publications.
WIPO: a UN agency offers a wealth of content that is highly valuable to Wikimedians
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of the 15 specialized UN agencies. It was created to promote and protect intellectual property (IP) across the world, by cooperating with countries as well as international institutions. Its activities are numerous. As a promoter of IP, it produces many publications, general guides, case studies, success stories, and other texts meant for the general public, of particular interest to Wikimedia, as well as in-depth analysis of specific economic sectors and annual reports rich in indicators, facts and figures.
WIPO administers 26 international treaties addressing a wide range of intellectual property issues, from the protection of audiovisual works to establishing international patent classification systems. Some of these treaties, such as the Berne Convention, have a direct impact on the work of Wikipedians.
In addition, WIPO provides global services for registering and protecting intellectual property across countries, resolving transboundary IP disputes, and maintaining a comprehensive reference database on IP matters. However, these particular activities are less directly relevant to the Wikimedia movement.
It’s worth mentioning that one of WIPO’s core missions is to host forums that foster discussions and shape international IP rules and policies. Unfortunately, Wikimedia is currently blocked from participating as a permanent observer in these crucial discussions.
What matters in this report is the wealth of resources provided by WIPO, which can be used to improve Wikimedia projects on the topic of intellectual property.
A very interesting fact is the decision by WIPO to adopt an Open Access Policy in November 2016, in support of its commitment to the sharing and dissemination of knowledge and to make its publications easily available to the widest possible audience. As such, except for some content published under more restrictive terms, new WIPO online publications started being issued under an Attribution 4.0 International CC license (CC BY 4.0) allowing their content to be copied into Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
Many of the productions done by WIPO are published in several languages, the 6 official languages of the United Nations (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese), which provides lots of opportunities to extend the coverage of IP topics beyond the English language and facilitate translation of content whilst using the exact terminology used by experts.
The WIPO Partnership: A Model of Success
WIPO started collaborating with Wikimedia in 2021; in 2022 and ongoing, Florence Devouard began as a WiR, attached to the WIPO Publication and Design Section, headed by Charlotte Beauchamp. Florence started by exploring the depths of WIPO resources to improve various articles on the English Wikipedia. She worked closely with different experts to transfer their content or seek their review of existing articles to identify knowledge gaps or incorrect content. She also trained some of the experts to equip them with skills to update articles related to their expertise later on their own. As article quality improved, she also translated the core articles to the French Wikipedia; in 2023, Salvador Alcantar joined to work on the Spanish Wikipedia, and in 2024, Mervat Salman joined the team to work on the Arabic Wikipedia. Not only did this team of 3 manage the content in Wikipedia in 4 languages, but they also added content in Commons and Wikidata.
What makes the collaboration with WIPO unique is that the content is shared in four different languages. The team doesn’t only look at WIPO’s archives, but also continually updates the content as new indexes, reports, and publications are released. What is unusual in that collaboration compared to other frequent institutional collaborations is that the team works with experts from the legal sector primarily, not from the communication/marketing sector, which means that the need to source facts, figures, or statements is second nature to them, discussions around “licenses” and “credits” are free-flowing, and the language used in many reports tends to be very direct and detailed-oriented. Before Wikipedia’s involvement, only WIPO’s publications were tagged under a CC BY 4.0 license. The first outcome of the collaboration was to get the website terms of license updated in 2022 to better reflect the choice of the Open Licence and we are currently seeking a slight change of terms in an attempt to reach perfection 😉
Collaboration with WIPO experts has been another success, as they help identify key resources and prioritize the creation or updating of content. They understand that wikifying their materials enhances access to their publications, news, and updates, ultimately advancing the goal of raising awareness about the significance of their work.The team members work in harmony to ensure that their efforts are aligned. Through regular meetings and online discussions, they continuously review and agree on priorities. The team recognizes the importance of unifying their efforts and keeping the WIPO team regularly updated on their progress. This model may encourage other UN agencies to partner with Wikimedia, making their valuable content accessible and freely available to all through Wikimedia platforms. The experience was shared in several instances. For instance, it was briefly shared with wikimedians in a video during Wikimania 2022.
In June 2023, FAO and WIPO co-hosted an IGO workshop on Open Access in Rome. The workshop focused on the opportunities and challenges of data licensing, as well as exploring Wikipedia with Wikimedians. It featured presentations and discussions from experts representing Creative Commons, Wikimedia, UNESCO, FAO, WFP, WIPO, and the World Bank. Additionally, a hands-on learning session dedicated to Wikipedia allowed participants to deepen their understanding. The workshop offered opportunities for attendees to participate in breakout sessions, ask questions, and share their own experiences and insights.
Finally, a panel (Partnering with intergovernmental organizations creates new opportunities for the Wikimedia Movement) was hosted during Wikimania 2023, by Florence Devouard (WIR WIPO), with several invited speakers::
* Charlotte Beauchamp (WIPO)
* Valerie Lafon (OECD)
* Ian Denison (Unesco)
* Suzanne Lapstun (FAO)
* Wikimedia Sweden representative
The panel was the opportunity for various representatives of several intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) to share their experience with Wikimedia and talk about how Wikipedians could engage with the IGOs (slides, video).
Believing that knowledge should always be shared, the WIPO-WiR team is eager to share their experiences with colleagues interested in becoming Wikimedians in Residence, as well as with any agencies seeking to make their content accessible to the world. They are dedicated to collaborating in efforts to enhance global knowledge accessibility.
Florence Devouard, Salvador Alcántar, Mervat Salman
Further Reading
We recommend this page to see a selection of core pages we improved and which we invite the general community to translate into their language: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiProject:United_Nations/WIPO
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