WIPO Academy Fortifies Cooperation with Costa Rica

By IDEAS

​WIPO Academy Executive Director, Sherif Saadallah, met with officials in Costa Rica to build on the Academy’s commitment to support collaborative initiatives with the established Intellectual Property Training Institutions (IPTIs).

The WIPO Academy helps member states set up Intellectual Property Training Institutions to meet their local intellectual property training and skills-building needs in a scalable and cost-effective way.

On January 23, 2024, Mr. Saadallah met with Mr. Agustín Meléndez García, the Director General of Costa Rica’s National Registry, and Mr. Gustavo Alvarado, the Director of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, to discuss a project regarding intellectual property and gastronomic tourism in Central America. The project was launched to promote gastro-tourism and boost the economic recovery of the region’s tourism sector in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discussions were also held on other ongoing projects to bring IP skills-building to local entrepreneurs across Costa Rica. After the WIPO delivered in 2022 the first intellectual property skills building training program for local entrepreneurs from Limón -a region on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica- in 2024 further tailored trainings are planned for entrepreneurs in the costal region of Guanacaste and the mountainous region of Pérez Zeledón.

The WIPO delegation also met with Ambassador Carmen Carmen Claramunt, Director of the Diplomatic Academy, and Ambassador María Isabel Sanabria, Deputy Director of the Diplomatic Academy, to discuss the future IP training needs of diplomats in the country.  Following the successful experience of training the first cohort of diplomats in 2023, a WIPO distance learning course for diplomats and trade officials will be integrated into the regular curricula and the national program will be delivered for new batches of students. 

The training program looks to equip Costa Rica's diplomatic staff with key knowledge on priority issues for the country's development, in addition to the main global challenges in the field of IP. They deliver a range of IP-related topics such as:

-IP protection in Costa Rica;

-Bilateral and multilateral IP treaties ratified by Costa Rica;

-The relationship between intellectual property and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030);

-IP and global health;

-IP and biodiversity protection;

-IP, art and the orange economy; and

-IP and technology development.

Source: WIPO