 Thanks very much Samar and I join Samar in thanking you, it's very kind of you to come at this stage of the year. We have to make a story out of numbers and I think there are several interesting story lines to these numbers actually and I thank Masayid Khan and his colleagues, Masayid is our head of statistics and he will be able to take you through any detailed questions that you have but let me suggest a couple of things to you. First in general we're dealing with the year 2010, right? This is a report on what happened in the year 2010. In general what it shows is a very strong recovery from 2009. So I think that's the first very clear picture that emerges and it's a recovery that is greater than the recovery in or the rate of global economic growth. So you had growth rates for patents of 7.2%, worldwide trademarks growth rate 11.8%, industrial designs 13% and utility models 13%. The world economy grew by 5.1% over that time. So this is I think a first thing to note. Now if we decompose some of those into patents and the trademarks, let me say that in the patent field you had a 7.2% increase in filings worldwide in 2010 and 80% of that was driven by China and the United States. 80% was driven by China and the United States. So we see a strong rebound from the United States of America. They grew in 2010 by 7.5% and China grew again by an extraordinary amount. Actually it was 24.3%, 24% China in 2010. What we see with China I think and we've been talking about this every time we meet now for quite some time, but it is again confirmed in the picture in 2010. So let me point out a couple of things to you. First the overall growth rate of 24.3%. But secondly if you look at the decade from 2001 to 2010 you see that China averaged a growth rate of 22.6% over the decade every year. So in the year 2001 the number of patent applications filed in China was 63,000. In 2010 it was 390,000. So that's an extraordinary difference in the course of one decade. One of the other things that happened with China in 2010 is that it became the country with the largest number of resident patent applications. So if you like any country receives applications from its own residents and from foreigners. The number of resident patent applications received by each office in the world if you look, measure all of those, China had the largest number of residents. So it's one measure if you like of domestic innovation and it passed Japan to have that position actually in 2010. Let me say a word about trademarks if I may. No sorry before I leave patents I want to make one other point if I may and you'll find it on page 2 the second last paragraph what I'm about to talk about in patent system. With all of this demand that we see for patents there is obviously a challenge for the patent officers of the world to process the patent applications. So we measure the number of potentially pending patent applications in 2010 as being 5.17 million. 5.17 million patent applications that are not processed or have not been processed. There has been some slight improvement in that it was a reduction of 3.3% over the preceding year but it's still an enormous number of potentially pending applications and it's something that raises a major policy question as to how the world should deal with that to make sure that we have an effective and efficient patent system that corresponds to the needs of industry. On trademarks let me say a word if I may. What we saw is a rise of nearly 12%, 11.8% in trademarks in 2010. That's interesting because it seems to us that as a generalization trademark statistics, trademark applications bear a much more immediate correspondence to economic conditions than patents do, much more immediate in time correspondence. Patents the gap it tends to be a little bit longer but in the case of trademarks they are to some extent a leading indicator of what's happening in the economy so we see a big rebound in trademarks 11.8% growth. Worldwide 3.66 million trademark applications and again we see China feature extremely prominently because China is the largest trademark application and one extraordinary thing figure that I can give you about China and trademarks is that the number of trademark applications coming out of China in 2010 rose by a quarter of a million, 250,000. I'm just trying to find where that is mentioned. Yeah, it rose by a number that was more than the total number of annual applications of France, Germany and the United Kingdom. So it rose by 250,000. It's on the top of page three of the press release for you. So again you see enormous activity occurring on the part of China and then for industrial designs let me say that this scenario that is experience in growth it's the total number of applications worldwide was 724,000 and that's quite a significant number and designs of course are the principal means of product differentiation and we see again China accounting for 83% of the growth in industrial design applications, the overall growth being at 13%. So perhaps I will stop there. I could add a word, one word which is so that's 2010 what's happening in 2011. We don't have the statistics from the national officers yet. That's the point of this report why it comes out a little bit later. But in the international systems we have seen in 2011 for the first nine months significant growth. So the international patent applications under the patent cooperation treaty in the first nine months of 2011 are up in the vicinity of 10% and international trademark applications in the first nine months up in the vicinity of 7%, international trademark applications first nine months of 2011 up in the vicinity of 7%. So now you know what happens with the turbulence in caused by the sovereign debt crisis is another story. So you have an indication yet? Well I think the essence of the situation is that it's unpredictable you know and that's that's I think what we're living with we're not sure what is happening. Well we collect them from every office in the world and some are more efficient at sending them in than others. And there's a lot of analysis in this too. Well I think you've got yes you've got several factors I'd say behind it and Masai please you know correct me where I'm wrong several factors. One is that you have in the advanced economies a rate of increase in the investment in intangibles which is greater than the rate of increase in the investment in intangibles that's the knowledge economy okay but more investment in intangibles in intangible assets and when you have more investment in intangibles of course there is more interest in protection of those intangibles namely intellectual property. So this is one phenomenon that's that's at play in the longer term and we see that in for example the latest estimate of research and development for 2012 gives an estimate which is positive over the growth of about five percent for example. What is the what? Why is that happening? Well the knowledge component in in production is increasing. Look at the way we live now compared to the way we lived in 1900 we were getting around on horses and you know we're not flying in aeroplanes we didn't have computers you wouldn't have been seeing they're doing that you know there there's there is there are some you know we are so technologically based that there is a huge investment of all the time and shows in the statistics in the intangible economy so that's one factor. The second factor I think is is a recognition in national economic policies and strategies that that this sector of the economy intangibles or research and development innovation is responsible for economic growth. The major component of economic growth it is responsible for competitivity you know your competitive advantage and it's responsible for the generation of employment also so therefore there is there is I think an additional reason to to why people seek to protect intellectual property the fruits of that and then you do have the phenomenon of China which has moved to become the second largest investor in absolute terms in research and development in the world it has overtaken Japan in that position and it continues to invest you know increase its investment in research and development and we see that reflected in the figures that I gave you of a decade of growth of 22.6% in patent applications so I think there are a lot of factors at play. I just want to be clear on the figures here again we are talking about applications filed through the national offices this is exclusive of applications filed through the PCT and the Madrid system well you know actually what happens in for some of the applications for example PCT applications is they are first filed in the national office let's say the U.S. then they come they file an international application and then after a period that international application passes into national applications elsewhere but we only count them once. Secondly in regards to the growth of China do you have any indication whether this explosion activity is being driven by Chinese companies are we talking about foreign investors who are seeking to protect their intellectual property in China? I think it's both in the case of China China I just have a note here in the case of China in Korea most of it is driven by resident applications it's the domestic applicant and driving the growth in case of China but in the case of U.S. a PTO in the U.S. is driven by both resident and non-resident applicants okay but domestic applicants could include joint ventures or Chinese joint ventures you could include that yes sure when you say patents filed are these patents are these just pure applications and then they can be turned down or they yeah we're talking about applications yeah but we do give figures on patents granted also and what we notice is that there's a record number of patents granted also in 2010 so you know typically a certain percentage will not get granted of applications okay I think that first of all what we see in Africa is an increasing use of brands okay it's a it's a primary use of the system of intellectual property and also a growing use of modern industrial designs as far as briefings are concerned it's always a field to work in a field to work in so our first accent in this report is what is happening in the world of technology and it's for this reason that we see figures rather the figures concerning the U.S. the Japan the China etc and it's just the technological capacity of African countries and in relation to the statistics the figures concerning the the demand for invention but as I said we see movement in the use of brands so great of the traditional cultural expressions of folklore, including the international legal framework for the intellectual property. That's the first thing. And this year, that is to say 2012, it's an extremely important year because the assemblies of our annual meeting of the member states in September must make a decision to convene or not a diplomatic conference for a treaty in this domain. A treaty? The traditional framework, folklore and intellectual property in relation to genetic resources. The second thing, we have a lot of activity for the reinforcement of the capacity for the protection of folklore and the traditional framework in this regard, the countries of Africa, say, Anglophone, if I may, in Rippon, we conclude a protocol to the agreement which is called the protocol of Soi Kop Mund in Namibia for the protection of the traditional framework in the country. And there is such an instrument under negotiation for the countries of the Francophone, that is the countries of the OAPI. John? Yes, coming back to trade marks and patents. With reference to trade marks, how many of these defensive trade marks have people just registering to prevent life registration? And if you have statistics in the three categories on dispute settlement or cases before the courts? We don't know, is the answer to both. So defensive, I mean, it's difficult to say, but as a guess, I would not see the nearly one million applications in China as being defensive, you know? And that great growth that you see in China, I don't see it as a growth in defensive. I think it's in first access to the system. Brand development. Yeah, brand development, exactly. And I think there is an increasing consciousness that an important dimension of innovation is organizational and marketing. And therefore, brands, you know, are prized more and more. And I think that's what we're seeing in the statistics rather than defensive protection. And on the litigation, we don't have the unfortunate statistics. Any indications from the court system where it's going, I mean, in cases now? In the patent area, and I would say, and trade marks, yeah. That's what I would have thought mainly in the patent area and in the ICT and telecommunications area in particular. It's very difficult to give a general answer to that. I mean, it's each country that makes its own policy. It makes its own decisions. I can tell you that at the international level, our fees have not changed for, since I think about 1990, well, a long time. Anyway, no, yeah, 1990, late 1990s. But nationally, fees do increase. But we've... But it varies across the offices. It varies, yes. What we're seeing in Japan is very interesting. We're seeing a changing pattern of use of the patent system. So in general, we see domestic applications going down and international applications going up from Japan. Yeah, that is correct. So that's an interesting concentration of resources. You know, it's saying what is important here is getting international protection for our enterprises. Protection in... Yeah, that's more important, getting international protection for our good inventions than getting multiple local applications for more inventions. Broadly speaking. In Japan, the data we have for 2011 for international system, the growth in application from Japan is 22.8%. That's a considerable increase. What are the national... 22.8%. And that's in... Domestic was... There was a decrease of one point... I just have to check. I think it was 1.1% domestic in Japan. And that's very interesting because, as you know, it's been a tragic year for Japan. But we see international patent applications increasing by over 20%. So it's a very... No, I mean, well, yes and no. The change is a change in behaviour of patenting from more emphasis on international for protection. Now, why it's part of this strategy of Japanese enterprises to emphasise the international protection, I think. Please. And then, Richard. Hi, I'm Yoshi Fujita. I'm Japanese, but I'd like to know... 2012 or 2012 in the next term. For example, is there a company to introduce? Well, you know, it's a very difficult question because you see the increase in investment in research and development in China is very strong. And you would say that a consequence of that is going to be a continued increase in patent applications. And it's not just in research and development. There's its increase in investment in education. And increasingly also, the capacity has improved as a consequence of past investment. So I think one might expect a continuation of the trend, but you would not expect that that trend would continue at the same high rates of growth, certainly not forever. Well, I mean, you're right. I mean, in the sense that it's difficult to predict what's going to happen, but the trend has been strong growth in China. But whether that's sustainable in the long run, we just don't know for that one. But apart from our investment, research and development investment, but also the GDP grew quite strongly in China. So all those factors come to play. Richard. The absolute figures that you give in your press release and in the report, are they always for the patent offices in the different countries, or do they accumulate also the international applications? Well, they're just two different... Therefore, the national, each national office. And then we have a separate set of statistics, if you like, about the international systems. Now, we only count once in the... We only count... We don't double count the international. So why do we do the statistics separately for the international? Well, for several reasons, besides our own business interests of, you know, seeing how the systems are performing and how attractive they are. But what... A rough assumption would be that what goes through the international system is the more valuable investment or brand. It's a rough assumption that if you are going to seek protection beyond your own market, then you must have a belief at any rate that it is a valuable invention. So you would say roughly that what's coming through the international patent system is other strongest inventions. And of course, you're not going to know that until afterwards, but that's the rough assumption. And therefore, it's interesting to know, you know, who is... where those are coming from and in what fields of technology they are and also where they are targeting. So US enterprises are patenting in what other countries that tells you something, you know, or Japanese enterprises are patenting in what other countries. Chinese enterprises are patenting in what other countries. These tell us something about patterns of trade and technological investment. And if I make a patent, an international one, do I say for which countries it is valid? Ultimately you do. You don't at the time of the application, but you do when you have to... There is a time limit for entering the national phase or the national procedure. So you have to at that stage. I'm curious if the international applications are in or not. They're included, yeah. But the total number of patent applications worldwide is 1.98 million. The total number of international patent applications is about 170,000. For one year? For one year. 170,000 last year? Yeah. 2011 we expect. 2011 we expect. Last year it was 164 roughly. I can give you that figure later on. 164,000, yes. We're expecting this year about 172. Can you say something about the tendency? Is the tendency growing that people want international applications? Yes. So the tendency is that growth in... You might say that growth in patent applications worldwide is being driven by first the knowledge economy, the increased investment in knowledge, and secondly by globalization. That is seeking protection in a broader set of geographical markets. Thank you. You spoke a lot on the national breakdown of patents and the quantitative trends. Would you have any comment on the tables page 65 through 67, for instance, or the kind of tables page 157, 170, and on my favorite, which is page 78, and this concrete application of 79. Do you want to go ahead? Go ahead. What I would say about 65 is, I think we've discussed, it's a very good graphic representation of changing the changing geography of technology production. 65 yet, but not 67 where we have the prize. 67. That's the Piero's government channel. That's state-sponsored. Yeah, yeah, but... So, yeah, but you've got in there ROK, Singapore, Japan... I am willing to stay for a full weekend with you. Francis, that excludes the defence R&D, right? This one basically gives the biggest... I mean, if you look at the top of... Well, it includes all defence except where it's classified, I think is the answer to that. Well, what's classified? The fact that they're doing research or what they're doing? Yeah, it's not. It does not get into the... On the relative, 79, Masaid, it's your index. Okay, I mean, this one basically, it breaks down the patent by... We go into a bit more details to see what is happening at the different technical fields. So, we break the data by technical field and then we compare the countries shared with relative to other countries to the total patent as well. And that gives you an indication of... This is one of the most inspiring pages. Yeah, it's very interesting. A lot of the stuff we know are expected. For example, if you look at the pharmaceutical, you have India, Belgium, and Switzerland on the top, you know, have a strong activity in that area. Which page is the pharmaceutical? Page 79. Same thing with the ICT, Finland, Nordic countries, Finland, Sweden, they have a strong innovative activity in the ICT field. And that, you know, visually is present in that information. And you don't have a... Here, the business sector... You don't have a list of pharmaceuticals, like 1665? No, we don't have the list for that one. The business sector is the top applicant for the international applications. So, we have the list of that. But we don't classify that, you know, what they belong to, but in theory, we should be able to get some data on that one. But we don't present that. Because the numbers are quite... I mean, if you look at the numbers of applicants, I mean, for example, the first one is Panasonic, and we are looking at 2,000 applications, so if you could further go down. Page 77. Page 77 has some... If they want names, countries, ring them up. But if you look through the list, you'll get a few. You'll get a few in the list. You know, what's interesting in that list too, if you turn over to page 66, is the university applicants. Do we have country, PCT? I think I've said to you before, but if you take page 66, and you take the University of California, 304, and you treated it as a country, it would come about 19th in the list of countries filing international patent applications. About 19th. That is, it files more international patent applications than about 120 countries. And that's a university. So this, the movement in universities is a very interesting thing. You see them coming into this field increasingly. Yeah, but they're coming. You wait and see. Are we... Are we good? Go ahead. It has been already discussed, during this press conference, the relation between creativity and patents has changed over history. The meaning of patent and symbol of industrial progress and evolution in the 1850s, probably not the same as etc. So when China comes in, does it also induce a revolution, not only in numbers, but in attitudes, in presiding the violence between defensive, offensive, the purely legal expertise, the technical experience, etc. Could you comment on the qualitative impact of the... We can't really. We can speculate, but we can't comment with proper analysis because you need to do a very rigorous study of it. You hear lots of different anecdotes about Chinese patenting, but, you know, with these numbers, the quality is not so good and so on, but there's no measure of that. This is not, I would not place any reliance whatsoever on those anecdotes. If they're investing, you know, roughly 200 billion dollars in research and development every year, I would not be game to say that this is producing low quality patents, you know. So I think we don't know the answer to that really, but it's a very interesting question to watch. The big dispute between the US and the Japanese that the Americans were claiming the Japanese were stalling on the registration of the applications and were doing it domestically by stalling registration, are we seeing something like that in China that the process is slow and then you see that the domestic there's no evidence of that. There's no evidence of that, but the fact, I would say the point is this, and obviously we're speaking in our own interest here as the multilateral organization, but the more investment you get in research and development and in intangibles generally and in the knowledge economy more generally, the more valuable your title of protection of intellectual property becomes for competitive positioning both on the individual, the industrial and the country level. And as that happens the more important it is to have an impartial arbiter and therefore the more important become the international procedures for obtaining protection and the fairness and transparency of those procedures. Mr. President. I did go back again. It seems that these huge growth figures we're seeing here, one could argue is an endorsement of China's intellectual property system. One could argue also enforcement as well. And we have countries like US with USTR issuing annual reports condemning China's protection of intellectual property rights talking about still massive piracy and counterfeiting. So I was wondering when you would see this as an endorsement of great improvements in China's system, these new figures or what? I think that what the figures show is the endorsement of China of intellectual property as an instrument of economic policy. They clearly are investing in it, and they're clearly using it. Now, if you want to say that there is some part of their system is not functioning as well as, you know, someone would like it to, for example, the enforcement part that's a different question. But here what we are seeing is an extraordinary investment in the use of the system. So they clearly consider the system to be an important instrument of economic policy, I would say. That's for the Chinese. That's the Chinese. And the more that they are investing in the system and the more applications that they're farming then I think you would say the more they will support the system. And they clearly see advantages in it. Steve faced two big challenges ahead. One is to write a book on the anecdotes on intellectual property you would never believe, but that will be probably after your retirement. And until then you probably have as a main task to make sure that the patent system and intellectual property remains at the service of technological and scientific problems. Do you see any issue currently which worries you in that sense and which you hope to correct in the coming one, two or five years? Well, I'd say the first issue is management of demand. So the 5.17 million potentially unprocessed patent applications this is a threat to the efficiency of the system. Clearly industries' interests and the interests of innovation I would suggest more generally by a patent system which is clogged up. So that's one big challenge I think. It's a mechanical challenge. I'd say the second big challenge is a policy challenge that as you get more investment in knowledge production and as knowledge becomes more important in every single form of economic production including health environmentally sensitive technologies, agricultural technologies and so on. As that happens naturally you get greater tension around social tension around the intellectual property right. I think that's a natural phenomenon because you get a collision of public policies. The health policies give access to healthcare to as many as possible essentially, crudely putting it. Innovation policies create scarcity in order to encourage investment in innovation. I don't think we should be worried about this. I think this is normal. It's an inevitable phenomenon of the knowledge economy. But we need to manage the tensions that arise, the policy tensions that arise. Then I think the third thing is that we have an international system a reasonably well developed legislative system internationally. But there is no development for internationally of the quote enforcement system if you like. And we're not alone in that regard just about every the international community is not wooded enforcement because for the obvious reason others snooping around what they're doing. So this is a challenge how can you hold together an international system in a closely integrated global economy dealing only with the creation of rights and not with their arbitration as it were with their but that's a terribly difficult policy question obviously on which the international community is not doing terribly well at the moment in all fields. We have one last question. I'd just like to come back to Dan's question Francis about Chinese alleged piracy etc. What what is your view on it what is the extent of it and how can that be tackled under the system as it exists? Well, first I think we have a measurement problem we don't have precise statistics on this so that's the first thing that we need to notice I think the second thing is that well it's a vast country and it's a country with differential levels of development and the eastern seaboard is obviously at a different stage of development from some of the other provinces and internal provinces and the western provinces of the country and whenever you have uneven development you have an even application of policies. This is inevitability so I think that what we can say at this stage is the Chinese take up of intellectual property is extraordinary you know and the prime minister of China has said Mr. Wen Jiabao intellectual property will be the basis of competition in the future so they have clearly a strategic view of this and what I think we will see is an increasing embracing of the whole of intellectual property and that will have positive consequences on their enforcement. Thank you so much Merry Christmas to everyone