 World Intellectual Property Day is held each year on April 26. The purpose is to talk about and demonstrate the role of intellectual property in relation to innovation and creativity. Each year we choose a theme for World Intellectual Property Day. This year it's movies, a global passion. Why movies? Why are we focusing on that? Well, look, I think with movies you have always had universal audiences. From the first silent movies these were watched with passion across the whole world and with fascination. Everyone was just taken by the movies. And what we've seen recently is not only do we have universal or global audiences but also universal or global production. Once there was just Hollywood which was the dominant player in production of films and movies around the world. But now we see Bollywood, you know, the Indian film industry, Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, but not just Nollywood and Bollywood but many, many other very healthy and active film industries across the world whether it's in Scandinavia or China or in other parts of Asia. Films really are IP. I mean basically they are IP, nothing else. Think about how a film is made. First of all you have to have a script. Well that may come from a book. There you have an author who owns the IP. If you don't have an author of a book then you have a script writer who is producing the script and who owns the IP of that. You must have actors of course, of course, and each actor has a performance which is the actor's IP. You usually have music. So music has to be composed by someone. The composer has IP. Music has to be performed. The performers of the music have IP. So you have this great number of players really which all contribute to the production of a film which we are able to watch as a seamless performance of a multiplicity of intellectual property. So intellectual property underlies the film industry. For all of these players whose intellectual property constitute a film there is an international legal protective framework and it started with the Berne Convention in the 19th century and most recently was completed if you like, at least for the time being, with a new treaty, the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances which protects the performances of actors which for various historical reasons had been omitted from that international framework. For me, for World IP Day, on this theme of movies of global passion, I would have two thoughts I think. First of all, when you're watching a movie next time, think of all the creators who have gone into this movie and remember that it's their intellectual property which enables them to earn a living. The second thing I would invite everyone to do is to think about the digital challenge because this I think is the responsibility of everyone, not just policymakers. How can we take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity that is presented by the internet to democratise culture but how at the same time can we ensure that creators continue to create, have an economic existence and can continue to have the means to make the films that enrich our lives so much.