 Good afternoon, everyone. We'd like to begin. So we have plenty of time for our discussion with the Director General. My name is Anna Maravietz Mansfield, and I am delighted to welcome you here for our annual meeting of accredited NGOs with the Director General of WIPO. And this is an event to which we very much look forward for an open and candid exchange of views. We will begin with the Director General offering some brief remarks about the achievements at the World Intellectual Property Organization over the last year and to look ahead to what we might expect in the coming months. And then we will open it up for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anna. Ladies and gentlemen, very good afternoon to you. I don't know where Anna got brief remarks from, but I shall try to conform to that. I thought if I spoke for about 10 or 15 minutes, just on an overview of what's happening, the more interesting part is, of course, the possibility for dialogue, where we can take up individual issues. So I'll try not to be too long. I'll try to respect the brevity. But so what's happening in the world of intellectual property? Generally, what we see, of course, one of the continuing trends is that the rate of growth in the demand for intellectual property titles around the world continues to outperform the rate of growth of the world economy. And that, if you like, is just one small measure of the knowledge economy, but we see this continued as a trend. So we have very significant demand for intellectual property rights throughout the world. About 2.37 million patent applications filed in the year now 2013, around about what it depends on the way in which you measure it, but 4.9 million trademark applications filed worldwide and about 1.2 million design applications worldwide. One of the things that we notice, I'd say two things, there are many things you could say about that, but two things I'll just limit myself to with respect to that growth in demand is that we see in consequence that the global IP systems that are managed by this organization also are experiencing a healthy growth. So in the case of the Patent Cooperation Treaty, last year it was about 215,000 international patent applications, which is a very, very significant number. And in the case of the Madrid system, well, it's approaching the 50,000 international application mark. In the case of the Hague system for industrial designs, as you know, that's a much smaller system. And we see that it is only now just taking off. Why is it only just taking off? Because it's enjoyed, of course, over the years a much smaller geographical reach than any of the other two systems. But as I think you're aware, the Republic of Korea came into it last year. Japan and the United States of America joined at the beginning of this year, and we expect a number of other countries, including China, the Russian Federation, and most of the Asian countries to join it. So that system will be transformed. Good growth in those systems, just as an observation, and extending geographical reach of the system. So more and more interest, I think in the systems worldwide, although there is an uneven membership. The other thing, of course, that has been a consistent theme over recent years with these systems is the changing geographical composition of the use of the systems. So we see that China, of course, in the area of the Patent Cooperation Treaty filed more international patent applications than Germany two years ago, and last year on that base was up again 17%. So if you look at the top users of the Patent Cooperation Treaty, it's the United States of America around about 26, 27%, followed by Japan about 21, 22%, followed by China about 12%, and then Germany about 10%, and then you go to the Republic of Korea about 6.5%, and then you go to France about 3%. So this is a radical transformation. Of course, it's nothing new. You're aware of this, but this has been occurring consistently, and will in our view continue to occur in the coming years. So so much for our global systems, but happy to go into many more details about them. I would like to highlight another area of our activities, which I think we have a communication problem about because we call it the global infrastructure area, and that conjures up visions of bridges and roads and railway lines, but what we're really talking about is a series of things, really, for, I'd say, principal activities that we have. One is our global databases, and I would like to draw attention to these because I think they've now become really very interesting global public free assets. So in our patent database, there are now some 44 million full text patent documents, and they cover a large number of countries. We believe it is the largest free full text patent database around the world, and it is used significantly by, first of all, industry, but secondly, by many NGOs, public interest organizations, and others, because it's an enormously valuable source of economic intelligence. From that, you can tell who is filing, where they're filing, in what countries, what markets, and what technologies are moving. So it's a very, very rich source for analysis. We have a similar database in, we call the global brands database that is smaller at the moment, but it is growing. It has about 20 million trademark records in it, and we've started this year a global designs database. So those products have associated with them also some very interesting linguistic tools enabling you to search in, search all languages in any one language, as well as translation tools, and we think they're very high performing tools, actually, that we have, for example, given to the UN for their translation services, and we think we get better results than Google Translate. So then we have, I think, a second area in this general sector, which deals with platforms, which are used by officers throughout the world, and users of the system, which really underlie the operational and intellectual property system. So if you like, this is one way of improving the quality of results that is coming out of the international intellectual property system because it improves the quality of information that is available. It also improves productivity and cost effectiveness. So to give you an example, one of these platforms is a case, we call it, centralized access to search and examination results, and it gives an office the opportunity to see how other officers have treated the same application. And we're getting good buy-in to that. So there are, at the moment, only about 11 countries using it, but they include, for example, Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and the list is growing. So it's an interesting piece of, it's an interesting platform. Then a third area that I would highlight here, which I think should be of interest to you, is our public-private partnerships. So two, in particular, I would like to mention, we have more, but two, I think are now well on the road to being extremely successful. One is WIPO research, and the other is the Accessible Books Consortium. So WIPO research is a partnership of pharmaceutical companies, universities, national institutes of health, for example, the United States National Institute of Health, the Brazilian, the South African, the Indian, and universities, and other organizations that are interested where they share on a free basis intellectual property related to neglected tropical diseases, malaria or tuberculosis. So you can, through this facility, organize, for example, to have access to the Compound Library of one of the participating pharmaceutical companies for the purpose of licensing, free of charge, a particular compound for research purposes. No payments are ever made unless you develop a commercial product on the basis of it. What's the interest of this platform? Well, I think the interest is that essentially we're dealing here as a number of you, who are specialists in the area, with an area of market failure. There is not enough research, hardly any private research, and relatively little public research into neglected tropical diseases. Why? Because they affect the world's poorest populations who have no purchasing power. And that creates an opportunity, namely, the opportunity is, that for a company to share its intellectual property free here, they're not losing any market share. And so we have over 90 collaborators in this arrangement now, and they have concluded over 80 collaborations amongst themselves for sharing intellectual property. The other that I mentioned is the Accessible Books Consortium. And on the Accessible Books Consortium, it's a consortium of everyone who is principally concerned with the question of books or published works being available in formats that are accessible to visually impaired or blind persons. So it involves, and many of you around the table are involved in this. So it involves publishers. It involves rights holders, organizations or managers of rights. It involves libraries as major distributors. And it involves, of course, the World Blind Union and others. And there the idea is that, again, centrally there is a facility for finding out where you can obtain a copy of a work in an accessible format. And exchanging that work in an accessible format. It also promotes accessible publishing. That is, it encourages there is an accessible publishing charter which encourages publishers to produce books in accessible format at the same time if they produce the copy for seeing persons. And it also has a capacity building element to it. The take up on this has been very good. I think it's really getting underway extremely well. I could give you some statistics on its use, but at the moment, of course, we don't have so many books in the repertoire, but this will change. Now, I think one of the questions that arises from these platforms, to which I have referred, which I hear occasionally is, oh, well, the organization is promoting these platforms instead of a normative agenda. Okay, so we do hear this. And let me give you an illustration of why I think that is an incorrect view of the matter. The Marrakech Treaty, as you know, to improve access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled, creates the legal framework to enable the exchange of works in accessible formats worldwide. It doesn't move the works in accessible format around. So it's one thing having a legal framework which permits something to be done, which otherwise wasn't able to be done, but it's another thing to actually do the thing. So I think there's perfect compatibility between the Marrakech Treaty and accessible books consortium, and I think that's what all of the participants, including the Wild World Blind Union, consider also. It's a complementary initiative. It is not a substitutional initiative. In the case of the WIPO research, which is something different, I can't say something similar because there is no legal framework. However, it's much better having action, I believe, much better having action and having intellectual property shared in an area where it's quite possible to share it and where the participants are very willing to share it and to encourage the acceleration of drug discovery, particularly when we're all very conscious, I think, that having a normative instrument to achieve that would be an extremely difficult thing to achieve. I'm not suggesting that we should not go the normative route in any of these areas. I'm simply suggesting that in the absence of a normative route, let's try to do something. So that's an area, I think, that is very interesting, and if you will permit me to sort of go off course a little bit, I think the reflection, one of the reflections that it causes, really, more generally, is that for a very long time in the history of international relations, the treaty was really the only instrument of international cooperation. But what we see right across the board, and it's not just in this organization, right across the board is actually that, for a whole variety of reasons, including globalization, including communications and telecommunications and the sorts of platforms and facilities that are available now, other interesting forms of cooperation between parties are now possible. And the further interesting dimension of that from a, if you like, a standing back objective point of view, I think is that it permits the participation of non-state actors much more readily than you would get in the development of a normative instrument. Now, I am not suggesting, please, and I'm sorry for repeating myself, that we should not have a normative agenda or that there is no place for treaties. I'm just suggesting that international cooperation has dimensions which are richer now than were possible previously. And that it's a very interesting opportunity, I think, particularly for NGOs. So perhaps I should say a word about our normative agenda now, and that's the area I hope we may be able to develop in our discussions. But of course, I think if you look across all of the international organizations, well, let's start with the world before we go to international organizations, the reality is that we live in a deeply divided world, a deeply divided world. There are more than 50 million refugees for the first time since the Second World War. There are multiple conflicts, as you are all painfully aware, all around the world. So the capacity of the international community, generally speaking, to agree is extremely limited. And I'm not, that's just an observation. I mean, look at what's happening in the world and in the international organizations. It is extremely difficult to find the capacity to agree in the international community on just about anything. In the year 2012, for example, the international community produced four multilateral treaties, of which the Beijing Treaty was won. In the year 2013, it produced, and that's across all organizations, all disciplines, in the year 2013, it produced four multilateral treaties, of which the Marrakesh Treaty was won. And compare that with the output of the national parliament. And you see that this area is an area which is extremely difficult. So naturally, we're not immune from that. And in addition, we add our own special dimension of dissension, as you're all aware, to that in relation to intellectual property. And I think that special area of tension that we see in the field of intellectual property is a consequence of many things. And first of all, the increased importance of intellectual property, the increased centrality of intellectual property in the contemporary economy. I think this naturally attracts more contention. The fact that the whole way in which, let's say, most societies now work has an extremely intense technological basis, so that people in their daily lives are consistently coming into contact with property rights in relation to technology in a way that they didn't before. And I think the internet's a very good example of that. So it has engaged just about the whole world, but a certain and extremely wide audience of youth and others in questions of intellectual property, which would not have been the case 20 years ago, without that direct contact that they had with intellectual property. So I think that's another reason. And then I think a third reason is that, of course, intellectual property, more specifically, innovation is increasingly the way in which enterprises achieve competitive advantage. And intellectual property is securing that competitive advantage, and so becomes the focus of competition increasingly. So I think we find that for these reasons, also, we have not just the general difficulty of the international community to agree about things now, but also the special characteristics of intellectual property, which make it an area of tension, which I don't think is going to go away. I think if anything, it will increase. What we have to do, we're not going to resolve those tensions, but we have to learn to manage them better, perhaps, because I think that's a reality of the world of intellectual property these days. So we see that our normative agenda is to put it very bluntly, blocked at the moment. There are a number of projects on the table, as you know, to cite them very briefly, and we can discuss them. There is a proposed design law treaty for design law formalities, which is almost there. There is a proposal for a broadcasting treaty, an anti-signal piracy treaty. There is the area, which we call the IGC, the Intergovernmental Committee of Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions and Intellectual Property in relation to genetic resources. There are other exceptions and limitations in the copyright area on the table, and these are perhaps some of the main areas without going into some of the others that are perhaps a little bit less mature, but we're not seeing movement at the moment and we hope that there may be movement in the future, and of course we're trying to do what we can, but this is really member state responsibility. This is the member state agenda. The one area in which there will be movement, of course, is the, what we call our Lisbon Agreement, which is a relatively old agreement, I think it comes from 1958, which is for the international registration and protection of appellations of origin. So appellations of origin are a species of geographical indication, and the member states of the Lisbon Union, of which there are 28, decided to revise the Lisbon Agreement, and broadly speaking, the revision, if it proceeds in the way in which it is contemplated in the basic proposal for the diplomatic conference, which will take place in the month of May in three weeks time, foresees that an international register will be established, not just for appellations of origin, but also for geographical indications, and it foresees a higher level of protection for non, for geographical indications outside the wine and spirits area, namely for agricultural products, other agricultural products, and non-agricultural products, such as, for example, Venetian glass. This is highly controversial, and is highly controversial for several reasons. Well, the first reason is that the controversy is fixed at the moment over a procedural matter, and that procedural matter is that, and I merely repeat the positions because this is member state business, on the one hand, you have the existing members of the Lisbon Agreement saying, well, the ordinary principles of international law that a treaty is a contract, and therefore, only the parties to the contract are entitled to revise it should apply, and that means that only existing members, 28 of the Lisbon Union or the Lisbon Agreement, may participate and vote in the diplomatic conference to revise it. And on the other side, you have a number of different countries, some of whom say, well, all normative processes in WIPO should be open. And not closed. And others of whom say, also say the same thing, but also say that the revisions contemplated move so far away from the original agreement that they affect the interests of parties outside the original agreement, and those parties outside should be able to participate with a right to vote in the revision of the agreement. That broadly speaking is the division that we see. And it's, of course, an extremely divisive issue. There are three weeks until the diplomatic conference. I mentioned the procedural issue, of course, underlying all of this is a trade issue, which has been played out in the World Trade Organization and the Trips of Ground Council for the last 20 years, which is essentially concerned with the capacity of a country to sell now dairy produce and process meats in export markets. So it's really not about whether the United States of America will protect geographical indications in the United States of America, but whether the United States of America uses as an example, you could say Canada, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, there are other countries involved, of course, can export products to third markets, calling them mozzarella or whatever else might be the geographical indication in question, Parmesan cheese and so on. So this is really a major issue, and as I said, it will play out in about three weeks. Now, I have not been brief, which I apologize, and there are many other issues about which we could speak, but I will stop perhaps there so that we can have some interactive discussion. So at this time, we'd like to turn the floor over to you all to ask any questions you might have. Thank you very much, Director General Gury. My name is Madeline Sheff from Health and Environment Program. I'm very appreciate your work since many years, and just to know, because here we are invited, has NGOs, so you need maybe some assistance from us, I don't know exactly, but when we observe what is going on Integral Mental Committee, we are not very optimist, and I see that you have formative lateral convention during this past four years. So how do you see the future of the IGC? Thank you. Thank you for that question. We'll take a few additional questions, and then the Director General can address them all in one turn. Please, sir. I speak on behalf of the International Federation of Library and Archives Association. I want to briefly talk about the work at the SCCR. We want to thank the Secretariat General for the actualization of the Kenneth Crew Study. We thought that was like a positive contribution to the discussion about copyright exception and limitation for libraries and archives, but at the same time we want to express our concern about the future work on those very topic of exception and limitation, and we'd like to ask you what further step you are willing to make to make sure that the discussion at SCCR will continue in a constructive atmosphere on those topics. Thank you. So I'm Yuan from MSF, the Legal Advisor. So I have one brief question regarding the database you mentioned. I think it's very important like we can access to those information to increase their transparency, but my question is although we use patents scope a lot, so far we have access to the PCT related information, but it's still extremely difficult and challenging to reach information in many developing countries. So when we go to the national phase page, often either there's no information at all or the link doesn't work, so to what extent WIPO has a plan to improve this transparency in the future work? Thank you very much. Well, the member states were unable to reach an agreement on the mandate of the IGC at the annual meeting last year in September, October, 2014, and so we have been without a work program on this year. There are two seminars, one of which has taken place and one of which will take place, that are providing a basis forum for discussion in the area. So how can we go forward? Well, look, I do see a lot of reflection going on amongst the member states about this. I don't think that there is total inactivity on the part of the membership. I think the member states are trying to work out on the one hand, if I may say, amongst the demanders, the countries that are requesting the establishment of an international treaty here, a reflection on how to actually achieve this because if you like the texts that are currently on the table are quite comprehensive texts. They, in some respects, resemble more and national law than an international treaty. So, and if you compared the area of patents, for example, you see that the first provisions in the area of patents were concluded in 1883, 83, I think, and 130 years later, internationally, we've probably occupied about 30% of the territory of patents, about 70%, which was within national, that's just a rough estimate. Just to give an indication that this is a very complex area and I think a major strategic question for demanders is how to go forward with this from this point. And then I think on the other side, if I may so refer to it, I think you have a reflection on saying, well, this is an area that is extremely important it's not going to go away, how do we engage with this? And we could all lament the fact that this is taking place 14, 15 years after the committee was first established, but I think that's what's happening. And so perhaps I'm just excessively optimistic but I do think and I do hope that we will see some movement in these regards if I think all the parties are pragmatic and see, look to achieve what is, look to see what is achievable. And I said to one group of member states recently and I didn't want to be misunderstood that I think we'll probably be talking about into a traditional knowledge 100 years from now. And I didn't mean that we will not have received achieved any agreements in between time. It's a profoundly complex area. It is as it was very well put, I think by the opening speaker, Justice Williams, in our recent seminar, it's the encounter often of two cultures with entirely different starting points. One starting from the point of property and contract and the other starting from the point of custodianship and kinship. And it's all about how you manage the interaction between those two cultures. And that's not a simple matter. That's not to say, and I don't wish I'm not being pessimistic, that there aren't things that cannot be done. I think there are things that can be done but we all know that industry fears most of all uncertainty and so the breadth of the existing texts is something that is causing pushback. So I think we have to become more specific and find out the ways in which we can actually achieve this and go forward. On libraries, well, it's not up to our secretariat, of course, it's the member states as to how they can constructively engage on this but I do think that a lot of good work has been achieved, as I think you suggest also. It's not to say there's not some distance still to travel and I think the discussion is going to, as it goes forward, increasingly focus on how you capture the results of the discussions and it's certainly on the agenda, it won't be going off the agenda. So I think, I hope we'll see you some more. For Médecins Sans Frontières, well, we are working on this and first of all, we have a large program for digitising the collections of pattern collections of developing countries. There are about 80 countries involved in this right at the moment, which is how we populate the database. But I think you were specifically concerned also about the legal effect of international pattern applications and whether they have entered the national phase. Theoretically, member states are obliged to report this to us under the regulations of the PCT. In practice, they don't, but we are working together with the EPO, I might say, in trying to encourage this and our program for digitisation and automation of office operations is helping making it a possibility to a greater extent. But yes, I agree, the whole point of this is to be able to have transparency as to the status of legal rights. And that's, we share the objective with you but it's just not always very easy to achieve. Thank you, Director General. We'll take a few more questions at this time. If anyone else? Theor, please. Thank you, Anna. This is Theor Balus Romanium from Knowledge Ecology International. Director General, in your description of public-private partnerships, the first one you mentioned was WIPO research. I was wondering what recourse, if any, do member states have to monitor some of the activities or policies of WIPO research? Because, for example, I remember when it was first started, I think one sort of area of controversy, if I recall correctly, was in terms of the scope of this project, in terms of which countries it could apply to or not. Thank you. I am Hans-Peter Kunsthalstein from the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property. I have two questions. Mr. Director General, first of all, thank you very much for what you have explained to us. It's very interesting to see a certain shift in the activities of WIPO, which is very interesting and I think a very good one. But then you said something that the world is divided and that normative action has become very difficult. There were two actions within WIPO, which were of interest to us. One is the S Standing Committee on Patents, which worked on confidentiality of patent advisors. And the other is the work in the PCT group of omission of certain information from public access. From what you said, it seems to me that normative action is not possible here. But my question goes in the direction. I read that some countries proposed a soft law approach. Do you think that this is a realistic option? I mean, we would be happy with it. But the question is, is it possible? Thank you. Kimani Goddard, CSAC. Just as a gentleman before me said, we heard a little bit about how norm setting activities are very difficult at the moment. And some of the people suffering from these difficulties in norm setting activities are creators. And we from CSAC, we would like to try to bring creators back to the heart of the norm setting agenda in copyright and collective management and are interested in hearing any movements regarding binding commitments on an international resale right and as well looking towards working with WIPO on binding commitments and looking at international legal mechanisms for addressing ISPs and transfer of value. So for Kea, for Thiru, I think that the question is not so much the scope. I mean, this applies to every country. Any country can participate and there is good broad geographical participation in WIPO research. And indeed, if you look at the activities, the collaborations that have taken place, Africa, for example, features extremely prominently in all of the collaborations. So I'm not so sure that's the issue, so much as the extent to which member states can exercise oversight over an activity that is a public-private partnership. I mean, we are after all an intergovernmental organization. And that's a difficult question, frankly, because first of all, the assets concerned don't belong to member states. So if you want to achieve collaboration in relation to unpublished research and intellectual property, let's say in the area of neglected tropical diseases, without a binding normative instrument which requires people to do something, then you have to get the collaboration of those who own the assets. And you might say the same for the Accessible Books Consortium. So the assets belong to the authors and are managed by rights-holding organizations and publishers. And they are the owners of the assets. So unless there is a direct command, as it were, from a normative instrument that exercises influence over those assets, you have to get cooperation from the owners of the assets. And so I think you could put that in the context of a much broader movement internationally, whether one likes this or not, of seeing that increasingly, the public sector is reduced in size and the private sector is expanded in size, so that spare capital and assets are in the private sector. And I think there are many ways you could look at that and it's a discussion that's well beyond what we're talking about here. So I think that's the question is developing a governance structure for public partnerships, which enables the proper participation of member states, but also enables people to deal with their assets, which are private property, until such time as anyone declares them otherwise, in a way which is socially productive. And the normal oversight mechanisms we have, of course, that in our program budget, it's the member states who's fix the programs and activities, they allocate the resources to those different programs and activities and we are accountable for achieving results and for the use of the resources and we have to come up with program performance reports which show what has happened. And of course, at the same time, you have the oversight architecture of auditors, external auditors, internal auditors, oversight committee, are overlooking all of that. So I think there is, it's not as though there's a vacuum in the governance structure, there is a governance structure that applies here, but the question is the extent to which a particular set of activities can go ahead without, as it were, constant supervision and that's also a division between executive functions and legislative functions as well. On the, for gruer, yes, Hans-Peter, I think, well look, I didn't want to be too pessimistic about the normative agenda, but it appears that I have been. So, you know, I mean that's a reality and of course we're very concerned that it restarts and that things are possible, but I think it's going to require some understanding amongst all the member states as to what is possible. And I think that's certainly a dialogue that I'd very much like to see take place. I'm not sure whether it will, but I hope it does because I think all sets of member states, wherever they are, have certain demands or requests and it's a question of finding out what can be achieved within all of those and at the same time you have a lot of pressures coming out of globalization, I think, and just the increased interaction which require certain things to happen. Just, the example I would give is just mobile telephones. Everyone would like their mobile telephone to work when they get off the plane in a different jurisdiction. And that can't happen without international cooperation. So you have to have globalization demand a certain level of international cooperation. But the tension arises as to where you draw the line on that. Some areas might be considered purely functional standardization that permit things like mobile telephones to interoperate. And other areas, some countries have very strong views should not be the subject of an international norm or should be the subject of a national flexibility, let's say. So it's drawing the line between what I think is required by globalization on the one hand and the national discretions and flexibilities that should be able to exist on the other hand. But I don't see that we're actually getting that conversation going sufficiently amongst the member states. And if you were to do that, well, I think one of the things that you might say is that privileged information in respect to multi-jurisdictional litigation is something that these days requires a functional standardization without and it's not something that intrudes on any special national flexibility interest. So I hope that's a sort of dialogue that might take place amongst member states, but in the future as to soft law, well, it's better than no law I think. And it does have an influence and I think it is useful. And of course that was, as you well remember, one of the ways in which progress or advancement was made in the early days with model laws, for example. They're now highly controversial, but the instrument I think of a model law did have an influence, even though it was soft law. So I think it's a useful thing to do. For CISAC, well, you know, the resale, as you know, we've had several events on this on the margins of the Standing Committee on Copyright and the resale right and the extent to which that might become a mandatory rather than a permissive provision. I don't see it taken up by the member states yet. Let's not say it won't happen. Of course you have a large commercial interest in auctions that are one of the obstacles in this regard. So I don't see any immediate movement. And generally for ISPs, well, it's an interesting space, of course, and what we see with ISPs is there's a good deal of experimentation still going on. There's a lot happening. I don't know whether you're following that right at the moment in Australia with respect to Game of Thrones and ISPs and new ways in which that's being tackled. But again, I don't see an international, the, I will stick my dick out and perhaps it's a little bit too far. But generally, I think there is a tendency towards a cooperative arrangement between ISPs, rights holders and in these areas, which is of a voluntary nature rather than a binding nature. But so that would tend to suggest that we're unlikely to see a rule established internationally. But, you know, it's a quickly changing space. Thank you, Mr. Director General. My name is Diego Grados. I represent the NGO Traditions for Tomorrow, which was recently accredited in 2014 as Observer to WIPO. We have followed for many years the IGC work. My question is beyond WIPO forum. You have mentioned the raising concern for an importance of IP in globalized economy, which seems to be a very interesting and important concept. How do you see a growing or not growing sensitivity in other intergovernmental UN-related agencies that concern that you have expressed? And my second question would be how does or what does WIPO contribute in raising that debate or trying to maybe water it down depending on which agencies and which topics are raised in that respect? My name is Peter Müller. I'm the president of ECTA, the European Communities Trademark Association. Of course, we are concerned about trademarks and designs. And I have two issues. The first one is the HAC agreement. We see that maybe there's not so much development in the normative area, but of course countries are joining the existing agreements, which we think is a quite successful thing. But one of the issues I would like to mention is that once these countries join like United States, Korea, Japan, there are peculiarities as it comes to the filing procedures, et cetera. And here we encourage WIPO as well as the member states to reach out to the users in order to help you defining these peculiar stipulations and rules. That is one of our ideas because often we suffer from the everyday life later on and maybe for years. So please, from the outset, we would like to be involved in these negotiations, not so much, but later on once they join on how this is done in practice. And the second one is the Madrid agreement. We see that a lot of communications which are coming from the member states as it comes to objections are coming at a very different speed. Some come shortly before the deadline expires, others are coming quite quickly. And we see that this is not WIPO's fault, not necessarily, it's often the member states who are reluctant or slow in proceeding, depriving applicants of their rights to a certain extent. So we think that is a two-way thing. If you join a Madrid agreement, you should, if you enjoy the speed of other countries, you should yourself also think about a certain minimum speed in order not to deprive foreigners in your own country of their rights in defending their applications. Thank you very much. I'm a representative for FILAI, Performance Organization in Latin America. We have today this interesting event about get-up, stand-up, what's ahead for music. I am very happy that this event is taking place in WIPO. And as today it's going to be debated what perspectives we have for music, for the global market of the music in the future, I would like to raise the question about the protection of performers in this area, in the internet area, because even as we have the WPP team that gives some rights to performers and also to producers, we are facing a reality which is that performers are not sufficiently protected in the digital environment since they are losing their rights through the transfer to the producer. They are not adequately remirated. And we are even facing that in the moment of negotiating, of bargaining, the position is not so strong than for our right holders. So I would like to raise this point. Is there any chance that WIPO could promote an initiative or get information from member states to improve the protection of performers in this digital environment and continue to account that this is evolving and we are not in the same situation than when WPPT was approved. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. So yes, I think for traditions for tomorrow, yes, you're absolutely right. We see that many, many other agencies are coming into contact with intellectual property in one way or another. That's certainly a case of food and agriculture organization, particularly with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It's certainly the case for UNESCO in various ways. It's certainly the case for WHO. It's certainly the case, obviously, for WTO. But there's an increasing range of organizations, UNEP, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Intellectual Property, and the Disaster Relief... What was it called? The one's at Sendai? The Sendai Conference on Disaster Reduction. Recently, of course, intellectual property and transfer of technology were major issues, so it's coming up everywhere. It's coming up everywhere. And so what we try to do is simply, first of all, to provide an information base because not everyone has the same information base about intellectual property, so we try to be present in order to explain the functioning of intellectual property and the role of intellectual property. I think it's the basic thing that we try to do. We don't advocate positions because our member states don't have positions on most of these issues. There are newer issues that are being discussed, so there are not yet policy positions that have been formulated by the member states. So we really are limited in what we're able to do, but we do try to engage and to provide useful information, and of course, we're always available to try to assist further. So we do have some more advanced cooperation. So we have that, for example, with the International Treaty and Food and Agriculture Area, in particular with our sister organization, UPOF, which is concerned with the protection of new varieties of plants, and the way in which the International Treaty, the Nagoya Protocol, and the UPOF system will interact in the future, and there are some special questions there. We have it with WTO and WHO in the area of access to medicines and from the perspective of health innovation and trade, and we will have a meeting later this year of those three organizations on a specified area in which the three directors general of the organizations will participate once again. So that's what we try to be present. For ECTA, Peter, on the Hague, yes, I think an inevitability of countries joining who have examination systems is a higher level of complexity in the use of the system. And of course, we are trying to make that as simple as possible, and we would certainly appreciate your assistance in that process. I would say that it's a two-way process, actually, because not only do new countries have an additional layer of complexity, but we also find that the existing system may not always be compatible with the needs of new countries. So I mentioned at the outset the changing geography of demand with respect to patents, as seen in the PCT. I think we're going to see something similar in the Madrid Agreement. So last year, for example, was the first year in which the United States of America filed the most number of Madrid applications because it's a relative newcomer, as you know, relatively speaking. So it filed more than Germany for the first time. And I think it probably is not going to be long before we see Japan and China. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see India in this area also joining the top ten or five filers so that your traditional list of the Madrid filers, the top Madrid filers, which has been really Germany, France, Switzerland, and so on, is probably going to change significantly in the course of the coming five years or ten years at the outset. And one of the things that that has raised, as you know, one of the questions is that you, of course, can't file an international application under the Madrid system. You file it on the basis of your national application or registration. Now, if you were Japanese, you would file that in Japanese. Or if you were Chinese, you would file it in Chinese. But when you internationalize it, of course, you're not going to internationalize the Chinese character. But a Romanized version of it. So, to what extent will the system that has prevailed for so long in Madrid over a hundred years be able to deal with the demands of the newer users of the system? So I think this is going to work in both ways. And it's going to raise the question of the role of the basic application and registration, which, of course, has been raised by Norway initially in our discussions in the Madrid working group. For Madrid and the refusal notifications, we're painfully aware of this, and it's a bit similar to MSF's question in relation to PCT national phase legal status, where we try to see if countries can comply, but we're not always successful. For Filaif, I think performers, yes, it's a very interesting question. Well, for a start, we would like, through our chief economist, to start to engage in some studies on performers. Because, as you know better than anyone, it's, of course, a very large sector, and much of it is informal. So we don't always have good data about what is happening. And we would like to learn more about the position of performers in the economy and what is their status. And then perhaps just another remark, if I may, is that, of course, we're seeing the great, you know, the digital revolution unfolding, and it's unfolding and changing all the time. But I think one of the abiding questions that we should have in this area is who is deriving value out of the production and distribution and consumption of cultural works in the digital environment. And that, of course, has changed significantly. And we see changes in the actors. But there is something to be said for the view that distributors are doing extremely well in this environment. And, of course, that would be the view of Taylor Swift. And I know she's not alone, but she's perhaps the most well-known example. And I think it's an area that we have to be very vigilant in relation to, because, after all, if we don't have creators and performers, we're going to have a very poor culture. Only for clarification. Is going, why put to understand these studies or to ask for the organizations about the data? Yes, we will, of course. And it's early stages, because there's a big queue in the Chief Economist's office, but we will obviously engage the performers' organizations here. I have a question about two particular types of activities that WIPO is doing while the normative process is, well, more or less blocked. And one is the information exchange and conference, information exchange conferences that you're doing. And the second one is the sort of practical solutions through stakeholder engagement. And I would like to hear your view on how and whether WIPO is willing to engage more in these in the interim and allow me to give it two examples. On conferences, we recently had a conference here on traditional knowledge and expression of folk law. It was a two-day event. And as far as I can tell, unanimously, all participants, whether stakeholders or member states, thought this was incredibly useful. I heard many people say we learned more in those two days than we learned in 12 years of debating this. And because we actually had people, gave them time to talk about practical national solutions. And so the experience with that event shows there should be more of that, not only, certainly in the area of TK and expression of folk law, but perhaps also in other areas. And my question would be whether you are willing to explore that. The second one is this area of practical solutions happening in parallel while the normative debate is going on. And for that, you've given early on the example of the Accessible Books Consortium. I'm on the board of that. And I'm representing the International Publishers, by the way. And I would like to particularly thank WIPO for its engagement there, because it is an example of an area where all stakeholders were willing and are willing to solve the problem, but actually WIPO, in creating a kind of structure and framework, it actually made this dialogue possible and gave us the time and the resources to find solutions. So we're making enormous progress, and none of that would have happened without WIPO's role as a sort of good intermediary and good agent. And we hope that we could explore that in other areas. And let me give you a specific suggestion for how we could perhaps explore that. Once a year, WIPO does an induction program for new member states delegates. I think that happens later this year. And once a year, we have this meeting here, which takes one and a half hours in which you graciously give your time to explain to all the NGOs, all the things that are happening at WIPO. Wouldn't it be even more productive if we had the new member states delegates when they come in for a day and the NGOs when they come in jointly for a kind of open day at WIPO, where not only you, but the other directors, deputy directors and assistant directors, generals or other people explain in one fell swoop what's going on in the various committees. Perhaps we can have one or two alternative perspectives who can say what's going on in the world, in these areas, while the committees are working. And that will give the new delegates and the NGOs a much better opportunity to reflect where maybe information exchange or even stakeholder involvement could be a useful and practical solution forward. Thank you. On the information exchange or conference, if you like, I think that there is a great role for it. I think that the member states are reflecting at the moment on the functioning of the committee structure, how that's working. And the reality, I think, is that now technology is moving so quickly that there is perhaps a larger role for pre-normative discussions. So our committees really are supposed to be normative committees. But what you find is that, of course, if you were to look into the life sciences as one example, you see extraordinary developments occurring that are escaping our attention. And I'm not suggesting that they should have our attention in order to regulate them or to establish norms in relation to them, but at least to find out what's going on. So personally, I'm a great believer in having pre-normative discussions because I think they always ensure that you have a better definition of where it is possible or needed to have normative action. And the more you do beforehand, the more likely you are not to embark upon a project which is unnecessary or the more likely you are to embark upon a project which has been well-defined and identified as needing action. So yes, I think there's great scope for it, but of course the member states will have to take the final call on this. But we will do something in this space in the area of the global digital marketplace in the first quarter or four months of 2016. Now, on practical solutions, if you don't mind Jens, I would like to say that I do not consider them to be a substitute for normative agenda. And I think that's extremely important because the moment people think they're a substitute for the normative agenda, we're going to get less cooperation. So they are, you know, where are they possible? Sorry, just before leaving that point about substitute or not, I consider that they are another dimension of international cooperation, added to the treaty or normative activities. They're not a substitute. They're a further dimension which is enabled for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. So that's very important to enable these things to happen, I think. Where are they possible? Well, it's where there is an opportunity and the opportunity, I think, can be created by market failure, as I mentioned earlier. The opportunity can be created by a market not functioning as well as it might. So, for example, to give you an example there, many economists complain that technology markets are not very transparent. And they're not very transparent because the transactions take place essentially privately. So there's no register or anything of this and they complain because they can't study them so easily. Well, WIPO Green is an attempt to create more transparency around a market for environmentally sensitive technologies. So if you would like to have access to environmentally sensitive technologies and you're a neophyte, you know, where do you go? And that's the idea there, is to create that possibility by packaging technologies in a way that they become a little bit more accessible. So I think there is scope, but we have to be cautious and to move carefully in this space, but I think it creates a great opportunity. Thanks for your speech. I am new president for International Federation, Inventor Association. My question is what is your program for the individual inventor and I mean what is the WIPO program to assist and to individual inventors? Thank you. I suppose there is always an individual, isn't there, inventor? It depends on where they are housed or how they are economically organized and perhaps there's a little less scope than there used to be for the person operating entirely individually. But we do have, as you know, I think programs for which reward inventors. So we have, those are very active and they're really administered by countries and we sometimes toyed with the idea of whether it shouldn't be elevated to having an international prize as well as the national prizes. And then we have a program which is directed as, I would say it's not dissimilar if I may, which is directed at small and medium enterprises. And the main problems at small and medium enterprises have, of course, is access to the intellectual property system, either through lack of knowledge about it or through cost. The expense of the system, the access tends to be a problem. So we do have there a major program and I think SMEs cover a number of what we might once have called individual inventors. So if there are no further questions, we would like to thank you very much for coming. It's always a great opportunity to exchange experiences and very much appreciate the Director General's time and sharing his insights with us. Speaking in the name of many of us, thank you very much, Mr. Director General, for giving us your time, your information, your wisdom. I think we all were very happy to hear you and thank you very much.