Every April 26, we celebrate the World Intellectual Property Day – a date selected by the World Intellectual Property Organization (the so called WIPO) – the global forum for Intellectual Property (i.e. IP) services, information, policy and cooperation – to reflect and consider the role played by intellectual property rights in both innovation and creativity.
In this respect, on April the 26th 1970 the WIPO Convention came into force – and at RGI, we want to take this opportunity to do our part in increasing general awareness and understanding of IP.
But why is Intellectual Property relevant to us?
Firstly, we believe that intellectual property is an enabler across different areas and industries, from the arts, music, and all creative works, to technological innovation and progress.
As a software company, which proudly owns its source code and the relevant rights, we invest resources in research and development to design innovative programs and applications that meet the needs of customers. Intellectual Property protection, such as patents, copyright, and trademarks, shields these creations from unauthorized copying, distribution, and use – and this protects our products, help us continue investing in our technology, and ultimately drive digital innovation.
Then, this year’s theme for the World IP Day is “Women and IP: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity” – and this takes us to another theme we care about, which is gender equality. According to WIPO, while the entire world – and the financial services sector in particular – focuses on enhancing economic stability for recovery, enabling women to access the IP system is one of the ways to foster innovation, ingenuity, and company growth, and is more crucial than ever. Research commissioned by WIPO itself earlier this year showed that “only 16.2% of inventors named in international patent applications were women in 2022”.
These numbers make us think about the importance of closing the gender gap across all sectors. For instance, in the IT and financial services field we operate in, there is a lot of work that needs to be done – and for our part, at RGI, we aim to transform not only the insurance market with our digital solutions but also the IT industry in general, in terms of inclusion and diversity
Finally, we also take this occasion to celebrate one of a cross-department recent work of the Compliance and Product team of RGI. Earlier this year, we proudly announced the publication of our new IP Group Policy, which outlines the good practices developed by RGI and applicable to all RGI Group’s Companies, with regard to the management, enhancement and protection of intellectual property rights owned by RGI Group.
The policy outlines a series of strategic initiatives for managing, enhancing and protecting our IP, and it’s a reference point for the entire Group. Also, we’re working to implement a monitoring system to keep an eye out for any potential infringements from both our staff and outside parties.
This is the result of months of work for our team, who joined forces to outline the document, as well as make sure that all of our colleagues get the importance and learn the best practices to protect our intellectual property rights. Also, it’s our last big step of the major journey of compliance supporting the business to emphasize the importance of IP protection in supporting the software sector’s overall growth and development.
