 I'd like to invite Ms. Karinjapke to lead us in a word of prayer. Rev. ourselves. Listen master, divine, we come before you this morning with the time sent to you for your strength and health and the ability to be here today. We ask that you embrace us and give us the divine intervention as we come together for this conference so that we may do all necessary for the betterment of our region. We thank you in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. You may have your seats. Good morning, one and all. Let me first of all, apologize for the late start. My name is Juliana Alfred and I am the permanent secretary in the AG's chambers and I will be your mistress of ceremonies for the first part of this meeting. I want to begin this morning by recognizing the Honorable Prime Minister, the Honorable Alan Shastney, Prime Minister of St. Lucia. I want to also recognize members of the cabinet who are present with us today. Senator, the Honorable Humangill Francis, Minister for Home Affairs, Justice and National Security. I also want to recognize the Honorable Attorney General who is also with us today. I also would like to recognize as well the Deputy Director of the World Intellectual Property, Mr. Mario Matas, Ministers with Responsibility for Intellectual Property of Caracum Member States, Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Permanent Secretaries from the Region and maybe St. Lucia. Distinguished representatives of the Caribbean community. Distinguished representatives of the OECS, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. Head of the Caribbean section of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Regional Bureau of Latin America and the Caribbean, Ms. Caroline Simpson, Senior Administrative Assistance, World Intellectual Property, Ms. Veronica Villa. Heads of Intellectual Property Offices of the Region, Members of the Waipo Ministerial Planning Committee, Staff of other government departments and chambers, other specially invited guests, representatives of the media, ladies and gentlemen, good morning again. It is indeed a pleasure to welcome you to this opening ceremony and before we get into any formalities, as we did yesterday at Government House and as we did on Tuesday, I think it was, we want to ensure that you get an experience which represents the culture of St. Lucia. After all, you are here speaking of the preservation and protection of expressions of folklore, other traditional expressions. It's all about intellectual property and so we wanted to ensure that you got a taste of St. Lucia. So today, we've diversified a bit. We gave you dance earlier in the week. So today, we're gonna give you one of our local bands, very popular, Mamai Lakai. I hand over to you guys. Now to invite Senator, the Honorable Home and Guild Francis, Minister for Home Affairs, Justice, and National Security to deliver some brief remarks. Minister. Thank you very much, Mr. Sirmaniz. Are you with me? Good morning to our Deputy Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Mr. Mario Matus. Ministers with Responsibility for Intellectual Property, Head of the Caribbean Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Regional Bureau of Latin America and the Caribbean Development Sector, Ms. Carl Simpson, Senior Administrative Assistant of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Ms. Veronica Villa, Distinguished Representatives of the Caribbean Community, Caricum, Distinguished Representatives of the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States, OECS, the Honorable Attorney General of St. Lucia, Honorable Stephen Julian, Heads of Intellectual Property Offices in the Region, Professor James Connolly, Clinical Professor of Technology at the Kellogg's University, Ms. Teni Ries, Consultant on Intellectual Property for the Trademark Manual Project for the Caribbean Region, Permanent Secretary, Attorney General's Chambers, Ms. Juliana Alfred, Members, Waipo, Ministerial Planning Committee, Invited Guests. I want to make a special welcome to my Prime Minister, Honorable Allen Luisi Siasne. I think you're in good company. So thank you very much for coming, Honorable Minister. On behalf of the government and people of St. Lucia, it is an honor to welcome you to the shores of the Helen of the West Indies and to deliver the opening address at this momentous event in the history of our region. An event of this niche stature, sorry, showcases our region's academic achievements, our continued pursuits towards economic sustainability and the spread of cooperation which lies within the hearts of every Caribbean national. It is a reminder of the importance of collaboration in achieving our visions for our respective nations and the region as a whole. St. Lucia is pleased to provide the stage on which the region's most pressing intellectual property issues will be expounded on. With the profound support provided by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Waipo, the region has been able to provide its people with the intellectual property insight and the means to protect the intellectual property rights. All countries represented here today can no doubt attest to the contributions they have received from the World Intellectual Property Organization. As a region, we take this opportunity to convey to the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization for his distinguished representative, Deputy Director Mattis. Our gratitude to the organization for the contribution made to our region and moreover to pledge our willingness to continue to work in tandem with Waipo to improve the existing IP rights structure and to expand the nature of IP protection across our nations. I also rise to express on behalf of my fellow ministers with responsibility for intellectual property. Our gratitude to the various heads of IP officers. Excuse me. Present here today. We thank you for being the champions of IP within our jurisdictions. Your sacrifices of time and effort must be commended. So too must your ability to execute public education and outreach initiatives, build capacity within your offices while balancing administrative duties and budget allocations. We wish to commend your contributions to intellectual property in the region and urge you to continue to build on the successes. Furthermore, I thank you for your participation in the preparatory meeting held on 24th and 25th July and for the resolutions which resulted from the meeting now laid before us today for our deliberation. We also wish to express our appreciation to CARICUM and to the organization of the Eastern Caribbean States, OECS, for its contributions towards developing and harmonizing the IP regime in the Caribbean. The efforts of CARICUM towards the establishment of a Caribbean patent administration system, C-PASS, are laudable. As you are aware, the draft text is now in its eighth version and provides for a single appreciation and awarding of a patent based on the satisfaction of regional criteria. The benefits of C-PASS were expounded by Mr. David Bradford at the Waipo Ministerial level meeting held in 2015. Mr. Bradford explained that for the inventors, C-PASS would mean a simpler and cheaper system with one set of official fees, one set of attorney fees, and a single bureaucracy to deal with for member states. The benefit would be the ability to meet treaty obligations, to provide a center of expertise in the Caribbean, the granting of a more certain legal right and the elimination of wastage of resources through the duplication of work across national IP offices. As such, it is my view that much like myself, my fellow ministers anxiously await the presentation on the proposed C-PASS, which we'll follow later today. Moreover, discussions surrounding the establishment of a regional approach to the protection of traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and genetic resources are of particular importance to the Caribbean region. Issues such as one, how can the region adequately provide greater public education on lesser known IP areas, such as geographical indications and traditional knowledge? We've limited economic resources to do so. Two, how do we persuade our creators and entrepreneurs that IP protection should form part of the business strategies? And three, how do we secure our traditional knowledge and folklore for future generations while protecting them from exploitations, from exploitation are cut-crossing ones? As such, a meeting of this level serves as a think tank to propel creative solutions to these complex challenges pervading across the region. As a region, we recognize the wealth contained in our culture and the danger of exploitation, which is an ever-present reality. We acknowledge there is an urgent need to adequately protect those areas of IP rights, admittedly there is much work to be done in the region to protect this emerging area of protection. As your makeup bolts ahead, no pun intended, the other nations must proceed with this before we are left behind. We echo the findings of the traditional knowledge working group that there is need for public education, capacity building, campaigns, and greater collaborations between key IP agencies across the region. I also wish to note the proposed trademark manual, which has been thoughtfully and meticulously prepared by Ms. Teni Ries, consultant on intellectual property for trademark manual project for the Caribbean region. This document serves as a testament to the commitment of our region to provide equitable and uniform treatment to nationals and non-nationals. The draft manuals demonstrates the excellence of our region's academics and the ability of our people to create mechanisms to guide our decision-making processes. I anticipate that the pictures backdrop that is our beautiful island will inspire resounding conclusions as to one, whether the areas of traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and genetic resources should be dealt with in separate provisions or a curriculum-based approach should be adopted. Lastly, having recognized the importance of cooperation between regional IP offices and the respective trade and export agencies in the countries in extending the reach of IP knowledge, we look forward to the presentation by the Caribbean Export Agency. I am confident that all IP offices will walk away from the presentation with a renewed sense of purpose and ideas as to how they can co-operate their local trade and export agencies in the efforts to promote greater IP awareness. To my fellow ministers, our presence here is a testament to our commitment to advancing our nations and the region's IP landscape to afford the greatest level of protection to our citizens. As we prepare to deliberate on the resolutions before us, I wish to leave you with our new marketing tagline. Saint Lucia, let her inspire you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Minister Francis, for this insightful presentation, much food for thought, and I'm sure we all welcome your contribution. I would like now to have a video, a video message being delivered by the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property. So I ask that the... Mr. Francis Garry. If you could just turn your attention to this. Honourable Ministers, distinguished heads of IP officers and the representatives of CARICOM and the OECS, thank you very much for this opportunity to say a few words at the outset of your meeting, of your extremely important meeting. I'm delighted that my colleagues are present with you. I envy them very much. Mario Matus is there, Carol Simpson. Amongst others, I envy them very much to be in the beautiful Saint Lucia and I should like to extend my thanks at the outset to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Justice and National Security of Saint Lucia and to the Registry of Companies and Intellectual Property Rights of Saint Lucia. Thank you very much for your kind hospitality and for agreeing to host this meeting with which we are very proud to be associated. It is, as I said, an extremely important meeting. It's an opportunity for dialogue amongst the chief policy makers in the field of intellectual property in the Caribbean countries. It's an opportunity to set policy directions and an opportunity also to prioritise amongst the many possible directions of policy that might be set. I should also like to extend our really profound thanks to the Caribbean countries for their constant support for multilateralism and for the World Intellectual Property Organization. We really rely on our Member States' support and engagement and we're very grateful to the Caribbean countries for this, I think, very consistent approach of promoting multilateralism in times when there are significant challenges to multilateralism. Well, in the World Intellectual Property, the trends that we've seen in recent years remain similar. We see growing demand throughout the world for intellectual property rights. Application numbers continue to rise and to rise at levels that outperform the performance of the world economy. We see continuing shifts in the geography of innovation of economic production in general. Asia has become a major, major participant in the world of intellectual property. The majority of intellectual property applications actually in the world are generated now, some 60% on average from Asia. We see increasing competition based on value addition and intellectual property rights, and we see continuous disruption as a consequence of the introduction of new technologies. So these are all, I think, familiar trends to you all that we see and they do have the effect of placing more and more importance on intellectual property as a mechanism by which the competitive advantage is secured and preserved in very intense and changing international landscape for competition. We, of course, have this our mission to support you even if it's rather modest support, but to support you in your objectives. And my colleagues, of course, will be taking you through various of our services that you are, I think, already very familiar with and the ways in which we can provide assistance through our global systems, the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the DRID system for trademarks, the Hague system for designs, the Arbitration and Mediation Centre. Our normative agenda, which is which requires a lot of patience, again, thanks to the Caribbean countries for championing a number of initiatives, notably Jamaica's role and other Caribbean countries' role in promoting an international form of protection for country names, which is under discussion in our Standing Committee on Trademarks, for being actively involved in the area of agriculture and branding, for being actively involved also in the area of intellectual property and sports, and, of course, for continuing and very active involvement in the promotion of an international protection for traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and intellectual property associated with genetic resources. We also have, besides our normative agenda, which, as I said, is a long process where the progress is incremental and gradual, but nevertheless slowly coming in some of the areas that I mentioned. We also have, as you know, a number of platforms that facilitate cooperation between the various IP offices in the world and an extensive program on capacity-building. So thank you for your active interest in all of these services and programs of the organization. Thank you for your support for the organization. We are there to serve you as best we can, even if we are very conscious that our contribution is a modest one. We rely on countries like the Caribbean countries for their support for multilateralism. I wish you very interesting and rich deliberations and many good decisions coming out of your meeting. Thank you. Attitude, Mr. Mattis, to the Director General of Waipo. I wish to now invite Mr. Mario Mattis, the Deputy Director General Development Sector of Waipo to deliver some brief remarks. Good morning. Thank you everybody for being here. Mr. Prime Minister, Ministers, Senators, Ambassadors, Dear Friends, I want to have a few minutes. That's why I am jumping ahead. Waipo, my boss, the Director General, has already mentioned many things. Our job in this context is to use, to facilitate the development of members, members of Waipo, to develop themselves through IP. That's our job. And we devote around 20% of our budget precisely to technical assistance. The main problem is that it's difficult to prove that IP, Internet of Property, helps development. We have a lack of data. Basically we measure it through applications. There are clear correlations, but not necessarily causation. So it's difficult to convince you, the champions or the political leaders in your own countries, to use IP. What I can prove you is that there is no single developed country without being a big user of IP. So that's the connection. The other alternative is to look at countries that at some point in their life, in their history, they have been developing countries and became developed countries. Singapore, Korea, New Zealand, Israel, Finland, Norway to some extent. Those countries, 30 years ago they were in the G77 in the context of the U.N. system and now they are developed. So those are examples that the IP is connected with development. The problem is that we have a number of, I would say, myths around IP. For instance, one very common is that IP is for the developed world, not for the developing countries. But it's not true. Yesterday we were talking about there are some elements of the current rules of IP which are very useful for development. For instance, we mentioned Jamaica. 40 years ago or so more, when they developed the reggae music, they didn't have in place copyright protection. And nowadays, most of the money that reggae music is produced doesn't go to Jamaica, stay in the U.S. or Europe. They didn't have in place a proper system on copyrights. Tags or trademarks, every country which is in the trade, they have names, tags for the products. If those products are not protected, somebody else will profit from them. Designs is the same. Look at this community, the capacity to create new forms, new designs. If those designs are not protected, somebody else will use them. So, current rules are useful. Patent is much more complicated because you need a minimal level of engineering. Okay, but that's our job, to help you to develop that through training. As a matter of fact, last year we had over 70,000 people trained through internet, through digital learning courses on the basic, from the basic IP up to very sophisticated training for examiners on patents and so on. So, this is part of our job. We still have some, I would say, myth or one area which is to some extent it's a friction. One is medicine. People tend to say that the medicines are very expensive because of IP. We were discussing a couple of minutes ago before this meeting. That's not true. The figures for medicine is that you need to create a new medicine around 10 to 15 years. And the protection is 20 years. So, in the best case scenario, the protection is 5 years. In the case of Cuba, we were discussing that the protection usually is only 2 years because I will not enter into specifics. And the cost of a new medicine is around $2 billion. So, they have to recuperate that money in 2, 3, 4, 5 years. But still, there is a perception that the medicine's price is due to IP. Again, I was telling them 95% of the current medicine in the pharmacies around the world, 95% is out of patent. It's not protected. So, what's the point? What's the connection with IP? No. It's marketing. It's a good promotion, trademarks, brands, but IP very little. Anyhow, the current situation in terms of the world IP Francis already mentioned we have, and this is growing every single year, 3.2 million of patents around 7 million of, in the case of patent 1.3 million are coming from China. 600,000 US. So, the US is already half of China. And in China, it's a developing country. In trademarks, 7 million around the world designs 1 million around the world. So, the current rules are useful for you. Please use it. But think about the future. Nobody knows who will be the leaders in the 20, 30 years of time. We may guess, but we don't know. But it's an educated guess to say that in the coming future, some of the current trend will be present and more intensified, more dense in 20 years time. And all of them are highly connected with IP. For instance, global value chain. Each of you would like to be a part of the global value chain to produce this part of the microphone. So, you have to have at least two things. One, proper rules for investment, to protect investor and investment, and proper rules to protect IP. Otherwise, the investor will not come to produce this part in this country because of the lack of protection of IP. So, global value chain is part of the future. It will be increased, will be intensified, and is connected with IP. 3G printing. Now, five years, ten years ago the price of a printer was 18,000 dollars. Now, it's 400 around the world and probably going down and down and down. So, in the coming future, almost everybody will be able to have it at home. A printer, a 3D printer. And then, we will be able to print our stuff. And if we would like to use that creation, that design for our own benefit, I will, the layman will ask for protection. As a matter of fact, a year ago in Geneva, there was a kid of 13 years old that at home he designed an skateboard. And he has a printer, he printed it. And he started to sell the design for his friends, colleagues at school, the skateboard for five francs, five dollars. That will be the common situation in five, ten years time. And those people will be asked for protection. And if they are not protected, somebody else will profit from that. So, artificial intelligence is a huge issue. I will not enter into nanotechnology. So, the future is IP. And the point is, those countries that are not accepting the reality of IP, they are shooting their own feet. So, that's the future. It's IP. And we can help you on that. Francis already mentioned that we provide, we have treaties to facilitate the use of IP. We provide services that facilitate your use. Actually, we are going to distribute the table with the our, what is your situation, the Caribbean situation, the treaties and the services that we provide. Those are for you, not for us. We are an international organization. Our job is to help you. So, all this is thought to help your development. And with this and I will make a call for you. You are the minister, prime minister. So, we need political champions at home. Without your political push with your political support, IP will not be part of your future. So, thank you very much. I hope you will enjoy this meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Mattis. I think in all the contributions that we have heard today the one theme that has been underscored is the importance of intellectual property and how it underpins, particularly areas of trade for this region. And so, it is something that we have to continue to put at the front burner. And I think with the presence of the prime minister and the high delegation, you can see that St. Lucia has put it at the front burner and we will continue to champion the cause of intellectual property rights. So, this ends the formal, I shouldn't say formal, that's incorrect. I think you go into a more formal session. This ends the opening ceremony and I would like now to extend some thanks first and foremost to the honorable prime minister Alan Shastney for taking time to be with us this morning. He also was socializing with us last night at Government House. So, that shows, of course he is very committed to this process and we want to thank him for being here. I want to also thank the honorable minister Humangale Francis for his presence and his delivery today, his commitment to the process. The honorable attorney general who has been with us over the last three days, three days I think. I want to also thank Mr. Mathias for his commitment and support and we would like you to extend on behalf of St. Lucia and I'm sure the region our thanks for the continued support from WIPO. We hope that the collaboration will only grow as the years go on. I want to also say thank you to members of the diplomatic corps for taking time to be here with us today. The delegates who are here the work is almost done or should I say the work has just started let me rephrase that the conference may be over but the work has just started and by your commitment over the last three days I am convinced that this process is going to move forward. I want to also say a special thank you to the WIPO planning committee and especially members of the external affairs protocol unit, the police the emergency services everybody who has provided tremendous support to chambers in ensuring that we've gotten to this process today. I want to say special thank you to all of you. I would like now to invite members to join us for refreshments. Our protocol officers will take our invited guests over to the room for refreshments. Delegates I think you also have refreshments, am I correct? At this time, yes and Prime Minister you are staying with us for a few minutes. Yes if you could just stay here for a few minutes. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.