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WIPO Joins ISNI as a New Registration Agency

WIPO Joins ISNI as a New Registration Agency

November 2024

NISO Member News

November 18, 2024

The ISNI International Agency (ISNI-IA) is pleased to announce that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency dedicated to serving innovators and creators worldwide, has become an ISNI Registration Agency. Formalized in October 2024 at the IFRRO World Congress and General Assembly in Québec, Canada, this partnership marks a milestone in global intellectual property rights management.

Through this collaboration, WIPO will integrate the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) system into its WIPO Connect platform, a comprehensive tool for Copyright Management Organizations (CMOs). WIPO Connect facilitates data sharing, licensing, and identification services, streamlining operations across the global rights management ecosystem. The integration will allow WIPO-affiliated CMOs to assign ISNIs directly to their members, enhancing the visibility, accuracy, and protection of intellectual property (IP) assets internationally.

Key Benefits of the WIPO-ISNI Collaboration: 

  • Global Visibility: ISNIs will improve global recognition and attribution for creators, allowing their works to be easily identified across borders.
  • Enhanced Data Interoperability: Standardized ISNI identifiers will simplify data sharing and synchronization across diverse platforms, benefiting rights holders, CMOs and licensees alike.
  • Broadened Access in Emerging Markets: The integration brings ISNI capabilities to new regions, supporting equitable participation of local rights holders in the global content marketplace.

Michel Allain, Copyright IT Manager at WIPO, shared his perspective on the new partnership’s impact: “Integrating ISNI into WIPO Connect marks a significant step forward in facilitating rights management worldwide. By advancing data interoperability, we’re strengthening the international reach of our CMOs and empowering rights holders across multiple industries and regions to reach wider audiences.”

The partnership highlights ISNI’s expanding role within the copyright management sector. Recent developments, such as a collaboration between the National Library of Finland and five Finnish CMOs—Gramex, Kopiosto, Kuvasto, Sanasto, and Teosto, demonstrate ISNI’s effectiveness in managing cross-sector creative works. Finland’s nationwide adoption showcases ISNI’s ability to enhance metadata quality, streamline operations, and improve digital data management. Additionally, ISNI’s recent agreement with the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) further emphasizes its role in supporting copyright ecosystems worldwide.

WIPO Connect’s global network of CMOs spans Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean and Central America, and Europe, representing a range of intellectual property stakeholders across music, literary, visual, and audiovisual works. This collaboration also supports ISNI’s mission to foster equitable access to intellectual property resources and bolster creators’ rights, particularly in developing regions.

Tim Devenport, Executive Director of ISNI International Agency, commented, “Partnering with WIPO is an important milestone in ISNI’s vision for a unified, global name identification standard. Integrating with WIPO Connect extends ISNI’s reach to a diverse range of users, supporting IP standardization in emerging and underserved markets.”

WIPO’s introduction of ISNI into WIPO Connect will facilitate the seamless assignment of unique identifiers across a broad range of creative and rights-holding entities, enhancing data accuracy and searchability on a global scale. WIPO Connect's comprehensive services—documentation management, licensing, and synchronization—will now include ISNI allocation capabilities, supporting nearly 60 CMOs across all regions. This will allow for more efficient access to identifiers, particularly in regions with developing markets.

The technical integration of ISNI into WIPO Connect, set to begin next year, will include the use of ISNI’s APIs for efficient assignment and interoperability across multiple international standard bodies, such as CISAC, IFPI, SCAPR and IFRRO. This collaboration will facilitate seamless, interconnected data management for all WIPO Connect beneficiaries worldwide.

About These Organizations

About WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is the United Nations agency that serves the world’s innovators and creators, ensuring that their ideas travel safely to the market and improve lives everywhere.

We do so by providing services that enable creators, innovators and entrepreneurs to protect and promote their intellectual property (IP) across borders and acting as a forum for addressing cutting-edge IP issues. Our IP data and information guide decision-makers the world over. And our impact-driven projects and technical assistance ensure IP benefits everyone, everywhere.

About the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI):

ISNI is the ISO-certified, global standard number for identifying the millions of contributors to creative works and those active in their distribution, including researchers, inventors, writers, artists, visual creators, performers, producers, publishers, aggregators, and more. As ISO 27729, it is part of a family of international standard identifiers that also includes identifiers of works, recordings, products, and rights holders in all repertoires, e.g. DOI, ISAN, ISBN, ISRC, ISSN, and ISWC.

ISNIs can also act as linking or bridge identifiers in cases where several identification schemas exist, thus enabling cross-walks and correlation between the different schemas.

About the ISNI International Agency (ISNI-IA): 

The ISNI-IA is the Registration Authority for the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) and is charged by ISO with governing, promulgating and maintaining the use of ISNIs worldwide.

ISNI’s mission is to assign to the public name(s) or persona(s) of individuals – as well as organisations involved in the production and/or distribution of creative works – persistent unique identifying numbers in order to resolve the problem of name ambiguity in search and discovery; and to diffuse each assigned ISNI across all repertoires in the global supply chain so that every published work can be unambiguously attributed to its creator(s) wherever that work is described.

Find out more at: https://isni.org/