On 26 April every year, the world marks World Intellectual Property (IP) Day, with the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialised agency of the United Nations system, designating a different theme each year. The WIPO decided that the theme for the 2019 World IP Day would be “Reach for Gold – IP and Sports”. This would open up new horizons for the general public, particularly children and young people, of intellectual property issues and their ever-growing role in sports at the global level, it felt. The relationship between sports and IP has been evolving in the developed countries over recent decades. It has manifested itself through many aspects, including the sponsorship of sporting clubs, teams and even individual players by certain economic, trading or financial institutions, and occasionally even by individual or family businesses. The broadcasting of major international, regional, sub-regional or national sports events, competitions and championships has also involved a lot of businesses in publicity and advertising, making the broadcasting of sports events a huge source of revenue for many sports organisations involving multiple stakeholders, whether domestic or foreign. At a different level, yet still under the same umbrella of the relationship between IP and sports, there has been a proliferation of companies, including transnational corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that produce sportswear, sports products and sports-related equipment. These companies have multiplied their business interests by using IP assets, including through registering their trademarks and engaging in local and international branding. Today, some of these companies have turnovers running into the billions of dollars. Since the early years of this millennium, the awareness of the relationship between IP and sports, as well as improvements in the management of IP assets on the part of multiple actors and stakeholders in the sports sector, has seen an enormous transformation. There has been a qualitative breakthrough, whether across the board or in selected sports activities, in a number of countries in the Global South, starting in Latin America and then moving to Asia and Africa, with the latter continents including the countries of the Arab region. The Arab countries have been no exceptions to such developments. Many Arab countries have embarked on paths aiming to bridge the gap that previously existed between the sports sector and the optimal utilisation of IP-related assets. This development has taken place in selected sports, particularly in its early stages, though it has not necessarily covered all IP-related aspects. It has covered the sponsorship of sports events as well as sporting clubs and federations. The live broadcasting of national, regional and international sports events, with all the huge advertising and publicity revenues that this can incur, has also rapidly increased and turned into a very promising industry in several Arab countries. However, there are still vast areas of unfulfilled potential in the economic exploitation of IP assets in the sports sectors of many Arab countries, even in those that have been considered as the most advanced in the Arab region in terms of managing and utilising these assets in their societies and in the region. With such developments in mind, on this year's World IP Day national and regional stakeholders across the world celebrated the event through activities that included conferences, seminars and workshops, and also awareness-raising campaigns among sectors including women, young people and children in schools, universities, community centres and sporting and social clubs. The theme of these activities was IP and sports. The national WIPO offices in the Arab countries, as well as the Department of IP and Competitiveness at the Arab League and the Patent Office of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), also joined in celebrating this year's World IP Day, each from a different perspective and with their own national, sub-regional or regional flavours. As is its practice every year, the Arab League organised a regional seminar on the occasion of World IP Day. This provided a golden opportunity for participants from various Arab countries to share their experiences in terms of the stage their countries have reached in the utilisation of IP-related assets in the sports sector, so as to contribute to sub-regional, regional and international competitiveness, on the one hand, and as inputs to their overall social, economic, cultural and technological development on the other. IP has constituted an integral part of the future-looking visions that many Arab countries have developed over the past few years, targeting the forthcoming decades, and the Arab League regional seminar in particular witnessed the mutually beneficial exchange of accumulated expertise and best practices. However, despite the progress that has been achieved, the Arab region still has a long way to go in order to reach a more advanced awareness of its IP-related assets in the sports sector and to ensure that all Arabs benefit from these in ways congruent with the region's business, industrial and overall economic objectives. Much can be done to help realise these through the optimal utilisation of such assets. Sports-related IP assets have a crucial role to play in enhancing the social and economic empowerment of children and young people in particular, this constituting an important component of development plans and future visions. 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The writer is a commentator.
