I hope you all have your party hats on

So, Sunday 23 April is designated by UNESCO as 'World Book and Copyright Day', 'an annual worldwide celebration, the event is meant to encourage and assist young people to discover the pleasure of reading books and the need to protect copyright and general knowledge of the literary industry'.

Then 26 April is WIPO's 'World IP day'. (notice that no one appears to have suggested a 'world patent day'. It's just hard to be generally positive about patent or celebrate the beauty and wonderfulness of patents even if they ARE good public policy).

I'm not sure what someone is meant to do on a 'World Copyright Day' or a 'World Intellectual Property Day'. Fortunately, WIPO has a list of suggested activities, which includes:

• With local businesses and chambers of commerce, organize workshops on how businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), can benefit from using the intellectual property system (oh, like we do all year really);
• Organize conferences at local universities to build awareness of intellectual property and its benefits among students, faculty and researchers (yes, we have information sessions all the time at Melbourne)
• Mount exhibits at local shopping malls explaining how consumers benefit from strong intellectual property systems (for example, how reliable trademarks can ensure consumer confidence, or how pirated or counterfeit goods can cause problems for consumers). (yes, I can just see this. No, kids, you don't want to see the Australian idol or Xfactor celebrity of the moment. What you really want to know about is trade marks)
• Hold a panel discussions (debate) on “hot” intellectual property issues (ie. Patents and pharmaceuticals, the download of music from the Internet, open source vs. software patents, etc.) – encourage public participation or hold in a university (I like the fact that public participation and universities are two mutually exclusive alternatives)

OK, so I'm being a little harsh here. But I'm just not sure that in Australia, a celebration of IP is going to be seen as all that appropriate or important the day after we remember the sacrifices of many in wars where people gave their lives - not their creative products - for their country.