Our Goals

CIPU is an independent, non-profit education organization dedicated to raising awareness about creations of the mind, the rights that protect them and their impact on businesses, people and society.

CIPU provides outreach within an educational framework that seeks to improve IP literacy, promote freedom of ideas and transparency. Established in 2016, the Center provides a context for how patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets facilitate innovation, encourage positive competition and encouraging sharing.

Many business and individuals share a common affliction when it comes to IP: they both prefer not to pay for it unless they have to. They believe that content, inventions and names are free to use, in part, because they have become so highly accessible. Even sophisticated audiences find it difficult to know which rights they must respect, when and how.

Advances in speed and communications have compounded the confusion, making accessibility a potential threat to innovation, authorship, and, ultimately, jobs. IP owners and users both are angry about the lack of certainty of rights and the inconsistency of how laws are applied. CIPU helps to sort things out.

CIPU holds events, like the annual IP Awareness Summit® and Washington briefings, which provide audiences a context for discussion and strategy; publishes summary research reports; engages in partnerships with organizations and businesses to promote IP awareness and consistency; provides reports about IP activities; and hosts an industry-leading podcast, Understanding IP Matters. 

Audiences include entrepreneurs, inventors, content creators, Fortune 1,000 companies, managers, investors, educators and students. Other primary audiences include consumers and lawyers.

There are many ways to participate in better IP understanding: share your experience with the CIPU community about achieving better IP understanding; ask to receive CIPU updates; join an advisory board; attend CIPU events such as IPAS and Washington briefings; follow CIPU on Twitter and LinkedIn; join the IP Awareness Group; and help us to follow and report on global IP education developments.

Improving IP literacy matters; achieving it requires participarion.