On the evening of October 29, the First WIPO-HUST Summer School successfully concluded. The closing ceremony, moderated by Prof. Yu Xiang, Director of the Sino-European Institute for Intellectual Property (SEIIP), HUST, took place on site at the School of Management, HUST and virtually via MS Teams. Four participants, representing different countries shared their thoughts and ideas about this summer school. They expressed that they were honored and happy to participate in the first WIPO-HUST Summer School. Throughout the 12 days of learning, they gained a deeper understanding of patents, copyrights, trademarks and other related knowledge. Further, they believed that this learning journey would be very beneficial to their study and future career, and looked forward to participating in the next year's summer school.

Dr. Liu Hua, Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Office in China, and Prof. Yang Zhi, Dean of the School of Management delivered speeches at the closing ceremony. Liu Hua expressed that with the trend of globalization, intellectual property plays an increasingly important role in creating jobs, attracting foreign investment and promoting economic growth, and has been deeply integrated into our daily business and production activities. WIPO is optimistic about China's innovation-driven development strategy and has high expectations for China to achieve high-quality development of intellectual property.

Yang Zhi expressed his gratitude to WIPO, all the lecturers, the staff and students for their contributions to this very successful summer school. He believed that WIPO and HUST will explore more extensive and in-depth collaboration in the future. He also called upon all the guests, leading experts and participants to meet again for the next year's WIPO-HUST Summer School.

The summer school was co-hosted by WIPO and HUST, and was co-organized by the HUST School of Management and the Sino-European Institute for Intellectual Property. Twenty-three leading IP experts from countries and regions including Germany, USA, Japan, UK, France, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, China’s mainland, Taiwan Region as well as Hong Kong SAR were invited to give lectures at the summer school. Among these experts were four members of Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe), and one member of the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). The lecturers also include senior professionals from international organizations, such as Assistant Director General of WIPO, Dr. Edward Kwakwa, Director of IP Division of WTO, Dr. Antony Taubman, Head of WIPO Academy Professional Development Program, Dr. Tshimanga Kongolo, etc.

Lectures at the Summer School were given by the 23 distinguished experts under the theme of “Intellectual Property & Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)”, including the topics of “International Landscape of IP”, “Patent Management in Enterprises”, "Measurement of Patent Value”, “AI and IP”, “Copyright in the Cyberspace”, "Protection of Trade Secrets”, “Trademark Systems in Europe”, “Special IP Regimes in the U.S.”, “Indigenous Knowledge”, etc. Over 100 registered participants from more than 10 countries and regions took the courses online or on-site. They discussed such topics as differences of IP regimes among different regions, how enterprises protect their IP rights in international trade, the copyright issues on E-commerce era, special IP protection and application during and after the COVID-19 pandemic with the experts.

Source: School of Management

Written by: Rong Xin

Edited by: Scott, Peng Yumeng