Opening Address by the President of the Republic of Cyprus – Intellectual Property Day
Opening Address by the President of the Republic of Cyprus
Intellectual Property Day
Excellencies,
Distinguished representatives of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office,
Ministers,
Representatives of the Research and Innovation Foundation,
Researchers, entrepreneurs, creators, students,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Intellectual Property Day.
Today is about much more than patents, trademarks and copyright. It is about one of the most important sources of prosperity in the modern economy: human ingenuity.
It is about how we create ideas, how we protect them and, ultimately, how we transform them into innovation, enterprise, investment and value for our economy and our society.
For generations, economic strength was associated primarily with physical assets: land, infrastructure, ships and factories. Today, an increasing share of global value lies in assets of a very different kind: algorithms and software, scientific discoveries and new technologies, designs, brands, creative works and human know-how.
These are among the defining assets of the knowledge economy, and intellectual property is what allows ingenuity to acquire economic value. It enables an idea to become an asset that can be protected, financed, licensed, commercialised and taken to international markets.
For Cyprus, this has particular significance. We are a small country, but in the knowledge economy, the size of a country does not determine the reach of its ideas.
Turning knowledge into value
Over recent years, Cyprus has built important foundations. We have strengthened our research and innovation ecosystem, developed strong European and international partnerships and created an increasingly attractive environment for innovative companies, researchers and entrepreneurs.
The results demonstrate our potential.
In WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2025, Cyprus ranked 25th among 139 economies and 16th globally in innovation outputs. Cyprus also ranked 11th globally in Creative Outputs, alongside particularly strong performance in trademarks and mobile-application creation.
These are encouraging achievements, but rankings alone are not our objective.
The real measure of success is whether knowledge becomes innovation, whether innovation becomes enterprise, and whether enterprise attracts investment, creates quality employment and develops products and services capable of competing internationally.
Just as importantly, we must ensure that Cyprus retains a meaningful share of the value created by the knowledge, creativity and talent of its people.
This is the next step in our development as a knowledge-based economy.
Building the bridge from research to the market
Cyprus today produces research of a high standard. Our challenge is to ensure that more of this research travels beyond the laboratory and beyond the academic publication.
A publication can be the conclusion of a research project, but it can also mark the beginning of something much larger: an invention that can be protected, a technology that can be developed, a company that can be created, or a solution capable of improving people’s lives.
This is precisely why we established the Central Knowledge Transfer Office within the Research and Innovation Foundation. Its role is to help researchers, universities and businesses identify knowledge with commercial potential, protect it appropriately and create the pathways that can take it to the market.
The journey from discovery to impact does not happen automatically. It requires expertise, entrepreneurship and access to capital, supported by an innovation ecosystem capable of bringing these elements together.
Our responsibility as a Government is to create the conditions in which those connections can flourish.
From adopting technology to creating it
Our ambition for Cyprus must therefore go further.
We do not want simply to be successful adopters of technologies developed elsewhere. We want Cyprus to be a country that creates technology and generates intellectual property; a country capable not only of producing knowledge, but of protecting it, developing it and building economic value around it.
We want our universities and research institutions to see more of their discoveries become solutions with real impact. We want innovative SMEs to understand and leverage the value of their intangible assets. We want entrepreneurs to be able to build globally competitive companies from Cyprus while retaining the intellectual value they create.
And we want international companies, investors and innovators to see Cyprus not only as a place from which to do business, but as a place where knowledge, technology and intellectual property are created.
This ambition becomes even more important as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced digital technologies and the creative industries continue to reshape the global economy.
In this new environment, competitive advantage will not belong exclusively to the largest countries. It will increasingly belong to those that can connect talent, research, intellectual property, entrepreneurship and capital faster and more effectively than others.
Cyprus has the talent, the foundations and the ambition to be among them.
Investing in our innovators
Ultimately, however, innovation begins with people.
It begins with the researcher willing to explore a new idea, the entrepreneur prepared to take a risk, the creator willing to imagine something different, and the young person who believes that an idea developed in Cyprus can compete anywhere in the world.
This is why I would like today to address those people directly.
To our researchers, I encourage you to think beyond the next publication. Consider also the invention that may emerge from your research, the intellectual property that may protect it, the company that may develop it and, above all, the problem that it may solve.
To our universities and research organisations, I encourage you to treat knowledge transfer as strategic infrastructure. Research achieves its greatest impact when knowledge moves beyond our institutions and reaches the economy and society.
To our entrepreneurs and creators, protect what makes you different. In a knowledge economy, intellectual property can become one of the most valuable assets you create.
And to the young people of Cyprus, I would say this: never allow the size of our country to define the size of your ambition.
An algorithm written in Nicosia can serve millions of people. A discovery made in a Cypriot laboratory can improve lives across continents. A design created in Limassol can become a global brand. And a technology developed in Larnaca or Paphos can compete in markets around the world.
In the knowledge economy, ideas do not recognise geographical boundaries, and talent does not require a large country in order to have global impact. What talent requires is opportunity.
Our responsibility is to create that opportunity by connecting research with entrepreneurship, creativity with investment, universities with industry, talent with capital, and Cyprus with the world.
This is how a small country competes in the twenty-first century: not by trying to become bigger, but by making its ideas travel further and by ensuring that, wherever those ideas travel, Cyprus remains part of the value they create.
This is the Cyprus we are working to build: a country that creates and innovates, that invests in the talent and ingenuity of its people, and that has the confidence to turn ideas developed here into opportunities that can reach far beyond our borders.
That is our ambition. It is also a significant opportunity for our country and for the generations that will shape its future.
And that is why intellectual property matters, not simply as a legal framework for protecting ideas, but as an essential part of Cyprus’s future economic competitiveness and prosperity.
It is in this spirit that I declare today’s Intellectual Property Day event open.
Thank you.