 The Honourable Minister of Commerce and Industry of India, the Honourable Anand Sharma, your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it's a very great pleasure for me to welcome you all here this morning for an occasion which has great significance for us. In the first place, this is the first visit that we have had as an organisation from a Minister of India for quite some years now. And we're very pleased in particular that that Minister is you, Minister Anand Sharma, because it's very pleased to be able to... It's a very good thing to be able to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution that you have made to public life and to international affairs in the first place. You have managed the critical portfolio of industry and commerce in India, one of the world's fastest growing economies during a very, very crucial period in the growth of that economy. You have had deep engagement, of course, in global trade negotiations. And you have also in your life played a major role in many, many international processes including the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, His Excellency the Minister will address us on the subject of innovation and development, the Indian experience. And before that, he will deposit India's instrument of accession to the Madrid protocol. India is, as I said, one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In terms of purchasing power parity, it's the fourth largest economy in the world. In terms of nominal GDP, it's the tenth largest economy. It's the seventh largest country in the world in terms of area. And it's the second most populous country in the world with 1.2 billion people. I think India's accession today to the Madrid protocol signals India's greater engagement with the global intellectual property community. It's also a very important endorsement of multilateralism and this at a time when many other solutions are being tried and tested but when, nevertheless, we have an increasingly globalised marketplace which requires global rules and global support systems for that marketplace. Trademarks are fundamental to the orderly functioning of markets and ever since markets have existed, really, trademarks have existed or manufacturers and traders have placed their marks on their goods to be able to distinguish them from other traders and manufacturers. Sumerian potters did this with their pottery, they put their marks on it and in the distributed and often virtual markets of the global economy now trademarks are even more important than ever as a means of constructing reputation and goodwill and of avoiding consumer deception and fraud. And thus we have seen that, for example, over the last period of 15 years the number of trademark applications that have been filed worldwide has risen from 2 million to 4.2 million trademark applications. The Madrid system is the centrepiece of the world's trademark systems. India today will become the 90th member of the Madrid system. It's the 14th member of the G20 group of leading economies to join the Madrid system. And we know that that system is undergoing a major expansion. In the last 12 months we've had four important accessions, accessions from Colombia, from Mexico, from New Zealand and from the Philippines and now India is joining this as the 90th country. I believe that India's accession will have great advantages for India for all of the other countries of the world and for this organisation, WIPO as well. For India, let me just say one or two words if I may. Looking at statistics last night, I notice that trademark applications in India have doubled in the last 10 years. They've gone from about 84,000 to 170,000 applications each year. In these terms, India passed Brazil in 2006 in terms of number of trademark applications that used the trademark system and it passed Japan and the Republic of Korea in 2011. And quite remarkably, when you look at trademark activity in India, about 90% of the trademark applications are filed by residents and about 10% by non-residents. And therefore, the Madrid system will offer to Indian enterprises and traders a great possibility of internationalising this considerable volume of trademark applications that is being made domestically. And interestingly, India is the third-largest filer of domestic trademark applications, resident trademark applications in numbers. But it's only the 38th largest filer of trademarks abroad. The Madrid system offers an opportunity to internationalise more of those domestic filings. For other member states, the Madrid system also offers the possibility of increased entry into the Indian market, which is a market that attracts the attention of everyone in the world. Before WIPO, the organisation, it is of course the accession of India to the Madrid system is an important endorsement, as I said, of multilateralism, as well as reinforcing the importance of the Madrid system, which will become in the course of the next five to ten years the world's leading branding system and resource. I now have the pleasure to be able to pass the floor to the permanent representative of India to the United Nations system in Geneva, Ambassador Dilip Sinha, before we will turn to the Minister. Ambassador Sinha, you have the floor, please. Honourable Minister, Director-General, distinguished colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank the Director-General, Dr. Francis Garry, for organising this high-level policy dialogue and for inviting our Minister of Commerce, Industry and Textiles to speak on India's initiatives and policies on innovation and intellectual property. I also wish to thank all of you for coming to this event. Intellectual property is an important contributor to economic growth and to technological development of a country. In today's knowledge-based global economy, innovation and intellectual property have become critical to a country's development. India has established an effective framework for protecting intellectual property rights and is taking further steps in this direction. The Indian Parliament approved an amendment to the Indian Trade Marks Act to enable India to accede to the protocol relating to Madrid Agreement concerning international registration of marks. And as has been informed to you, we shall be depositing our instrument of accession to the protocol today. We are convinced that our accession to the Madrid Protocol will benefit our industry and promote our economic development by encouraging investment and business activities in the country. The Madrid Protocol provides a simplified and cost-effective way of protection of trade marks in multiple countries, which is beneficial for the right-holders. We look forward to more countries joining this protocol. On a more personal note, I might add that the last major treaty that India acceded to was the Patent Cooperation Treaty way back in 1998 when I was a delegate over here. So it gives me great pleasure to be present here on this occasion when India acceded to the Madrid Protocol. I'd now like to request Minister Sharma to hand over India's installed accession to the director general to mark India's accession to the Madrid Protocol. So, our minister, let me thank you for this. As I've said, it's really an extraordinary event for us, a very major event in the life of this organization. Thank you very much. And it's a great pleasure now for me to invite you to address us on innovation and development. The director general of AIPO, Mr. Francis Garry, Ambassador Dilip Sinha, Permanent Representative of India to the UN Office at Geneva, Ambassador to WTO Jayant Prasad, Senior Officials, Deputy Director General, Excellencies, Ambassadors, Permanent Representatives of the member countries, friends from the media. I'm delighted to be here in your midst today. It's a special occasion with India becoming the 90th country to join the Madrid Protocol. It's an important step that has been taken completely in sync with India's thinking and approach on intellectual property rights, our international obligations and commitments, and also to create and contribute towards creating an environment which facilitates registration or trademarks and intellectual property rights. It's also very useful for the Indian corporates, our business entities, who are now enlarging their footprints in all continents, given the economic changes that have taken place in the world, and in particular also in India, with the Indian corporates gaining more in self-confidence, benefiting from technology, innovation, the resources that they have been able to access to step out and engage with the rest of the world. Today, our entities, both public sector and private sector, have significant presence in all the major regions of the world and it's growing. At the same time, we also recognize that we are living in times which are very challenging, particularly when it comes to the global economy and the downturn, which has led to the world becoming more competitive, particularly when it comes to businesses or creating the right environment. Each one of you here is better informed as to what has been happening in the last five years. The financial crisis, the economic crisis, the adverse impact on all countries, developed, developing, emerging, poor. In 2009, at least there was a well-coordinated efforts by governments, in particular the interventions that followed post the G20 meeting in London on 4th of April, with governments stepping in and investing huge resources in stimulus packages to stabilize the institutions and to revive the global economy. Unfortunately today, those resources are not available and there's kind of instrumentalities to intervene with the governments, either of rich countries or emerging economies and others. And the global economy has not recovered. That's a real challenge. Even if the recovery is there, it's a jobless recovery in most parts of the world. And there are always some turbulence when you think that one issue has been settled, some new problem crops up. And that is a matter of worry for all of us. D.G. Francis Garry said that India is, which is rightly so one of the fastest growing economies. But I cannot be in denial. We have also been adversely affected. And today the developed countries, they have the real issue, which is engaging their attention is to how to put in place regulatory mechanisms, how to stabilize institutions. Whereas for the developing countries, it's a different issue. That how to find the right balance between high spending and budgetary deficits or current account deficits to maintain the high growth momentum at the same time control inflation. So in this backdrop, innovations, inventions become very important for all the countries. For the industrialized nations, it is to bring down the costs, but to be more competitive when it comes to the production processes. And for the emerging and developing countries to embrace the technologies and to straddle the big divide and to benefit from innovation, which would be a major contributory factor to the economic growth. It's not something that these two words have been coined now. Invention and innovation has been integral to the journey of human species, of nations, societies, historically. That's how societies have evolved. And people have, through their creativity, given to the society something which is beneficial, which improves productivity and contributes to the common good. And that's so well documented. But in the contemporary context, particularly post-industrialization, it has assumed a different dimension. And we all are familiar with that. But last century has seen major leaps in innovation, in invention. That is post the first and the second wave of industrialization, beginning with the harnessing of the steam power and the use of the energy across the industrial sectors, which remained a major source of industrial production until 1940, though electricity was made available and the invention was there perhaps 60 years before. When Manhattan was lit after Edison came with the bulb in the electricity, it took still 60 years. Now the innovations that are taking place, particularly last centuries, the first half and the second half, we are well aware of what the first wave did. That was the automobile assembly lines and the inventions that came, the mass production lines were established. And later, post-second world war, another wave of technologies, which really changed life. Historically, as I have been informed, during times of adversity, there have been great innovations and inventions. And that has been happening even now. Look at the last 15 years of the 20th century. There are not one but multiple waves of new technologies and that's what changed with countries like India, China, Brazil and others which are referred to as emerging economies moving forward. And particularly in communication and information technology, India leaf-frogged. And that's where we bridge that big historical divide which had kept the countries in Asia, Africa, South America behind to become global leaders in some of these technologies, particularly in the information technology. It's a different matter that whether it came naturally but it was important. This century, we have seen the first decade transforming technologies. What we could not think. All these, my generation, some of us never thought is going to be there. Could not even imagine that the world will change so much in our own lifetime. We were used to listening to radio. There was no television. Now youngsters are carrying palm tops. There's new gadgets which are coming up. And we see that it has brought about so much of change and so much of challenge, particularly when it comes to decision making, putting in place regulatory mechanisms or changing the approach of the institutions or investing more in institutions so that they can adapt to the new technologies, new production methods. And this is going to continue. Now this century definitely is going to be knowledge based on knowledge. That's where countries which are able to adapt and also ensure that they are in a position and have capacities to assimilate new technologies but also to set aside resources for invention, for R&D will be able to remain competitive. This is also a century in which the historically deprived in different continents will matter more and determine the course of change. It's not only determination but also influencing. And that the emerging economies and the developing economies definitely will be doing. If you look at today's world, both in terms of new technologies, it's true that the United States and Europe they remain leaders when it comes to innovation and technologies. But at the same time there's some catching up in western institutions. In case of India, I would like to share that it's not something new that happened as I refer to the early 90s or the 21st century. If India today is home to half of the Fortune 500 companies, where more than 80,000 scientists have worked and engineers in the last decade where 4 billion has been spent on nationals alone on research and innovation. That we started investing in our institutions long back. Soon after India's independence, the institutions of excellence which will set up, Indian institutes of technology, Indian institutes of science, space science, nuclear science, departments of atomic energy, national laboratories, you're familiar, with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Council for Agricultural Research, the Defense Research and Development Organizations. All of these were set up, say in the 60s, 1960s. Now we are investing more. That's how we value innovation. We are more than doubling up the number of our Indian institutes of technology, management. From one mega-national institute of science, we've established five more Indian institutes of science. From one NID, four more national institutes of design, more triple ITs, 400 world-class colleges that have been added, major universities. Also we are investing in human resources, capacity-building, research, but also from the industrial perspective to make people employable. That's important. It's not to give technology and to create opportunities. How people will benefit from that. And that has to be by empowering them through skills. So it's both the industry and the government coming together, not only in R&D, in innovation, but also in skills training. We have an ongoing national skills training mission to train skilled 500 million Indians by 2025. Now the numbers look big. It's a daunting task, I know. But it's not a question of choices. We are a country of 1.2 billion, as was pointed out. And the median age is 23, 24. As I've said in the past, even by 2040 India's median age will not cross 35. So that's where the strength is, the great human resources, the demographic dividend, and that's where the challenges, the social costs, which we may have to pay if we do not move at a pace that we seek to move and go back to high growth. So it's the more industrial training institutions which are being established in India, 1500 to be precise, this is the new. 1500 are being established by industry, 5,000 skills training center, and the list is a long one. Why I'm sharing this with you, just to inform you as to what we are seeking to do back home. But at the same time, we are also very clear about innovation, intellectual property, and the various regimes of protocols that have evolved. We have aligned ourselves completely. Ever since the multilateral treaties were agreed to, signed by India, we amended our intellectual property law twice. And the last was the patents law in the year 2005. So we fully conform to all the treaty obligations and the best global practices. We have institutions which are in place. We are a country which has always valued innovation, historically. But for the period which I refer to, where we surely were not there when it comes to the global narrative or the canvas of the industrial revolutions, whether it was the zero or the decimal system or the Ayurveda or traditional knowledge, it's not only that we have had, each country, each society, they've had their own innovations and inventions in their journey. But in the current context, India is today the cradle of frugal innovations. Major innovations, but frugal innovations. And so much has been written and commented about. We were discussing today, this morning, over breakfast about it. You know that there's a refrigerator, a fridge, battery operated, which has been developed by one of the leading corporates of India, Godridge. That costs $70. We have water purification system using rice husk where the recurring costs are only $4. We have electronic tablet, which we are giving to our school children, which costs $35. We have the nano car, which is 34 registered patents for $3,000. We have ECG machine for $800, portable, in a backpack. And we also have other instruments which we have developed, including for ultrasound, for one twentieth of the cost when it comes to the cost in America's or in the developed countries. Same is the cost of many of the vaccines or medicines. When you look at the good work which has been done through frugal innovation in India, it's not something which is in conflict with science, laws, or established international practices, protocols, or agreements. So India is a country which believes in not only developing technologies which are affordable and adaptable, but also to ensure that they are made available to other countries who need affordable technologies when it comes to economic development, when it comes to overcoming the historical burdens. That's what we are seeking to do. I would also like to mention here that we are investing in institutions when it comes to the intellectual property rights or the registration of trademarks. We know that after our accession to the Madrid Protocol, it's a very strong reaffirmation of India's commitment and then abiding one, not only to trademarks protection, but to the intellectual property protection. The number of patents applications which are filed in India, we are investing more in our institutions, training more examiners, training more from our scientific institutions, and that is reflected in the number of patents applications that have been filed in India in the last five years, more than doubled. So it's not trademarks, but also the patents applications for intellectual property. We ourselves have declared the decade, this decade as the decade of innovation. We have created sectoral verticals for innovation and we'll create a cross-sectors, an Indian patents regime too, which is entirely in sync with the global patents practices. That is going to happen. A special fund has been set up only for innovation. So we are mindful of what the investments are. It's a one billion fund. As a nation, we are more than doubling the state's contribution to innovation and R&D from 1% of GDP to 2% of GDP. So if applications are being filed in India, we have our patent developers or innovators, they are filing patents abroad. And it cuts across all sectors. Many people may not know that besides what I refer to, 80,000 scientists and engineers working in developing new technologies in India, but also in the case of the encryption codes, particularly in software or the usage of software when it comes to intellectual property, that complex work of encryption to a large extent has been done by our IT professionals. So we as a country understand the import of intellectual property. When you look at the number of patents, I give you one example being filed by the principal companies in the United States of America who have their subsidiaries or research hubs in India. It's the same number of patents applications which have been filed by the mother companies in the United States of America as the number of patents which have originated out of research from the subsidiary companies or the hubs in India. This is the reality. But we also have to look at the complexities of the subjects. We are mindful of that. I was discussing with Director General Francis Garry. I have to find the right balance. It's he who raised it, and I entirely agree with that, that the right balance has to be found. A, the investment that goes in innovation and how the reward should be there and how the patents have to be predicted. That's why even even in our new national manufacturing policy we are creating or establishing a technology acquisition fund where patented technology will be acquired and made available to micro, small and medium enterprises who do not have the resources to buy those patented technologies. But also the common public good. They're large parts of the world. Their food security is an issue. Their people are expected to sustain themselves in less than $2 a day. With food available in abundance, there are hundreds of millions who go hungry to bed. There are hundreds of millions who are victims of life-threatening diseases. You have pandemics in the world. There are nations who cannot have adequate budgets to ensure that life-saving medicines are made available to people at affordable prices. That is the balance which I was referring to. There's a difficult choice and societies and governments and institutions have a responsibility. There comes a point, a threshold where the intellect of the world must also then be used to protect human lives and for common good. This is what we need to do together in Vaipo, in other forums so that we move forward in a correct manner. I know that good work has been done here. It's still being done on traditional knowledge. We are very happy to share that with you that back home in India, we attach enormous importance to traditional knowledge and also the genetic richness which societies have concerned about biopiracy and the denial of benefits of the traditional knowledge to communities and countries. We have created a huge database. We call it the traditional knowledge digital library. Francis Garry is aware of that. 225,000 entries. Now the benefits of the same are being commercially exploited. There's a lot of piracy that has already taken place. I know that it's not going to be easy but we have to bear in mind that if we are talking of intellectual property, if we are talking of trademarks, the traditional knowledge is also intellectual property and it is being used in the 21st century for healthcare, for other uses. Therefore we must work to reward communities, nations and societies who have enriched civilizations and even today are benefiting the people through what has been their knowledge. I'm sure that Waipo member countries will work together on behalf of the Republic of India that can assure you that we will work closely to ensure that we adhere not only to the best practices but also move forward in a manner where the balance which has been elusive is also found to the satisfaction of all. There cannot be unanimity of approaches. Unanimity is something which will always elude us but we can have a general consensus, a broad-based consensus on all issues which is accepting and supportive of our initiatives and the work that we do collectively. Thank you.