The WIPO Convention (formally, the Convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization) is a multilateral treaty that established the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It was signed at Stockholm, Sweden, on 14 July 1967 and entered into force on 26 April 1970.
As of August 22, 2025, the convention had 194 contracting States.
Paris and Berne Conventions (1883 and 1886)
The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, adopted in 1883, was one of the first intellectual property treaties. In its original text it established a Union for the protection of industrial property and the organization of an international office under the title Bureau international de l'Union pour la Protection de la propriété industrielle, which "shall be placed under the high authority of the highest Government authorities (Administration supérieure) of the Swiss Confederation."
Three years later, with the adoption of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886, a second international bureau was created: the Bureau international pour la protection des œuvres littéraires et artistiques, also under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Government.
Following the creation of the Berne Office, the Swiss Government effectively merged it with the Paris Office by appointing the same director and staff to both organizations. Nevertheless, this unification was not formally established until the decree issued by the Swiss Federal Council on November 11, 1892, creating the United Bureaus. Eventually, these united offices would come to be known as the Bureaux internationaux réunis pour la protection de la propriété intellectuelle (United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property), or BIRPI.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the institutional structure of BIRPI, which had been designed in the previous century, had become inadequate for the political and technical realities of the time. By the 1960s, four international intellectual property agreements had established their own respective unions:
Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (1891)
Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs (1925)
Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (1957)
Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration (1958).
These unions lacked assemblies of member states with decision-making authority and were all administered by BIRPI. Consequently, oversight of their activities and finances remained in the hands of the Swiss Government.
Additionally, other similar international organizations established in the nineteenth century like BIRPI, such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunication Union, were also modernized and became specialized agencies of the United Nations in 1949 and 1948, respectively.
One of the strongest advocates for the modernization of BIRPI was Jacques Secrétan, who served as its director from 1953 to 1963. In a speech delivered in 1956, he outlined a reform program based on three main ideas: intellectual property rights should receive international protection through an intergovernmental organization dedicated to them; this organization should have its own jurisdiction and its own governing bodies so that it could represent those rights effectively in international relations; and that BIRPI should become part of what he called the “great family of the United Nations.”
In 1960, Secrétan oversaw the transfer of BIRPI’s headquarters from Bern to Geneva, home to the United Nations’ European headquarters and several of its specialized agencies. The move offered practical advantages and symbolically reinforced BIRPI’s ambition to become part of the United Nations system.
Beginning in 1963, under the leadership of Georg H. C. Bodenhausen, with Arpad Bogsch serving as deputy director, BIRPI’s structural and administrative reform began to take shape. The process moved forward through a working party convened for this purpose, which met in May 1964, and a committee of experts that met twice, in March 1965 and May 1966. The working party included representatives from Czechoslovakia, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Sweden announced that it was prepared to host an international conference in its capital, Stockholm. The meeting was later officially named the "Intellectual Property Conference of Stockholm" of 1967. The convention was signed at Stockholm, Sweden, on 14 July 1967 and entered into force on 26 April 1970. That international instrument established the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which replaced the BIRPI. WIPO would become part of the United Nations in 1974.
The convention was amended on 28 September 1979. These amendments changed the periodicity of WIPO's budget and ordinary assemblies from triennial to biennial.