Abstract:

Introduction:
Intellectual Property (IP) training has become more widespread and influential in the last two decades. Although IP training programs have become more widespread and important, so far they have not attracted much scientific attention from researchers in this field who are interested in global policy and practice in the studied area. Despite this gap, the activities of some organizations working in this field, especially the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) attracted considerable criticism, justified or not. The actual or perceived deviations and shortcomings in IP training programs, along with many other things, have contributed to the incentives for reform of IP training for non-specialist lawyers. This paper will focus on distance learning courses, which are gaining popularity, given the new reality in which modern society finds itself.

Presentation:
Distance learning is essential, especially nowadays, mostly because of its flexibility. Due to the global pandemic distance learning becomes top choice for career development and professional growth, but it is also prior in university education. Considering the fact that IP is sustainable part of the society, it should also be examined and taken into account. These IP rights are vital for the business, as they cannot only be used to protect someone’s own inventions, but also provide valuable business instruments that can be commercially exploited.

The goal:
The paper aims to make an international overview of the good practices of distance learning courses proposed by WIPO, EUIPO and EPO. The analytical overview is based on different criteria, which the authors of this paper are based including level of knowledge (general or advanced course), tutored/not tutored, cost, open/restricted access. The paper gives general information about the courses and their suitability – the range covers all issues related to understanding IP and its legal aspects, but also offers education in related scientific fields. The courses are designed for different audiences: content creators, business managers, IP professionals, policy makers, students and teachers of IP and the civil society. The used educational methodologies combine different methods of the teaching process – online face-to-face or self-tutored, stimulating learning at own pace.

The methodology for achieving the main objective of the study and solving the set research tasks include the following specific methods: content analysis, comparative analysis, and synthesis of the obtained information, relevant to the topic of the paper.

Conclusion:
As a result, it has been found that the distance learning helps build human capacity in IP, which is essential to innovation and increases intellectual property literacy (IPL), but it also stimulates lifelong learning – the essence of information literacy (IL).

Keywords:

Intellectual property, distance learning, intellectual property literacy, information literacy.