IFIA ARPAD BOSCH MEDAL

The highest international recognition of invention and innovation supporters

 Árpád Bogsch

Dr. Árpád Bogsch (February 24, 1919, Budapest, Hungary – September 19, 2004, Geneva, Switzerland was a Hungarian turned American international civil servant. Dr. Bogsch began his professional career in 1942 as an attorney in Budapest. In 1948, he moved to Paris as a legal officer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Copyright Division. In 1954 he took up a post as a legal counselor at the US Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., and became an American citizen in 1959.

Bogsch was the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from 1963 to 1997, as well as serving as Secretary-General of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. Under his direction, WIPO expanded its role and influence in the world of industrial and intellectual property. Bogsch launched a multitude of groundbreaking initiatives, notably by advocating the conclusion and revision of numerous international treaties, launching an ambitious program of assistance to developing countries, modernizing the system for the international registration of marks, creating the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre, and presiding over the baptism of ATRIP, a world association of intellectual property teachers and researchers. He was also the father of the Patent Cooperation Treaty. In addition, he contributed extensively to providing China with a modern intellectual property system and welcoming it into the international intellectual property community. Similarly, when the Soviet Union broke up he actively assisted the countries that emerged to create their own national systems and, as far as most are concerned, to build up a common patent regime through the Eurasian Patent Convention.

The Árpád Bogsch Memory Medal was founded by the International Federation of Inventors Association (IFIA) in 2010 to award the invention and innovation supporters who are active in the spirit of Árpád Bogsch.