 Design is the language of communication of objects. Anything that has a physical expression has a design, whether it's a conscious one or an unconscious one. Design communicates the aesthetics of a product or an object, the beauty of the thing. In commerce, design performs an extremely important function. It performs the function of product differentiation, especially in areas where technological possibilities have been exhausted, where there are no more improvements to making the function. Design constitutes the means by which consumers will prefer one product over another. Around the world each year, about 700,000 applications for industrial design protection are filed. They're filed in all sorts of areas of industry and commerce in fashion, in footwear, in the automobile industry, in watches, in jewelry. WIPO simplifies the task of obtaining protection for industrial designs, for designers in more than one country through our Hague system for the international registration of industrial designs. WIPO has great pleasure in joining everyone around the world, national industrial property officers, the general public, in celebrating World Intellectual Property Day and in particular in this year, 2011, in celebrating the importance of design.