The European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market recently announced it has signed a wide-ranging agreement with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

According to OHIM, the contract between the two organizations will see them cooperate in a variety of fields, including data sharing, human resource exchanges, training and IT tools.

Francis Gurry, director general of the WIPO, said in an interview that there are two main reasons for cooperation between the organizations.

The first reason, Gurry said, is globalization. According to Gurry, both technologies and economic behavior "tend to be global" and, as a result, "we have to adapt our intellectual property system to those global phenomena." This adaptation, according to Gurry, will require a certain amount of convergence of international bodies.

Secondly, Gurry said, demand management necessitates greater cooperation. In a "knowledge economy," demand for intellectual property rights is continuously growing, according to Gurry. As a result, "we need to find ways in which we can cope with that, and one of the best ways is work sharing," he said.

The new contract follows cooperation agreements signed by the OHIM with the European Patent Office and the Korean IP office last month.