Such access by developing countries will be a tool for technology transfer and economic development to the benefit of these countries and their inventors, industry, universities, and research and development institutions. General Concept of Digital Libraries 4.
Digital libraries are electronic equivalents to paper collections of records.
An Intellectual Property Digital Library is an implementation of the concept of a Digital Library, i.e., an organized collection of electronic information disseminated to a designated community through network technologies providing easy access to data. Provided that a global secure network can be established, digital libraries hold the potential of vastly simplifying the process of providing access to timely and complete collections of intellectual property records maintained by other intellectual property offices. Digital libraries, accordingly, present an attractive alternative to the paper-based collections maintained today by most intellectual property offices. The WIPO Intellectual Property Digital Library is one example of an intellectual property digital library. The system provides comprehensive web-based searching, with retrieval and display by users on demand.