 Honourable Ministers, Your Excellencies, the Permanent Representatives and Ambassadors, distinguished delegates, it's a very great privilege and a pleasure for me to extend a very warm welcome to all delegations here this morning to this session of the Assemblies of the World Intellectual Property Organization. I'm deeply grateful to the Member States for their commitment to the organization which is so apparent in the presence of so many delegates here this morning, over 1,000, I believe, are registered for the Assemblies. At the outset, I should like to extend my thanks to the outgoing Chair of the General Assembly, Ambassador Zvekic, for his dedication and service over the past two years. Ambassador Zvekic has been committed to working to achieve agreement amongst the members and has been very effective in so doing. And we're indebted to him, I think, for his professionalism and his diplomacy. I congratulate the new Chair of the General Assembly, Ambassador Kairama, and I very much look forward to working with her to advance the multilateral agenda at WIPO. The 12 months since the last Assemblies have produced, I think, many positive results for the organization. I have described them in some detail in a report that has been made available to you this morning, and I won't go into that detail, but I would like to mention, if I may, some of the highlights from those results. Financially, the organization is in a very sound position. We ended the year 2012 with an overall surplus of some 16 million Swiss francs, and that took our reserves at the end of that year, last year, to the level of 178 million Swiss francs, which is some 58 million above the level that is set by you, the member states, for prudent financial management against any adverse downturns in our operating revenue. As you will have observed, the construction on the new conference hall is progressing very well, and we should be finished that in April or May next year, which should permit us to hold these Assemblies in 2014 in the new conference facility. Our global systems, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Madrid system for the International Registration of Marx and the Hague system for the International Registration of Industrial Designs, have been continuing to experience growth levels that outperform the world economy. We're also witnessing a steady and consistent expansion of the geographical coverage of these systems, particularly the Madrid system and the Hague system. All three systems, which have memberships of 148 for the PCT, 91 for the Madrid system and 60 for the Hague, respectively, are on their way to becoming truly global in their reach, even if at different speeds. We've made great progress in a number of ways in relation to the technical infrastructure that underlies the operation of the IP system worldwide. Now, this infrastructure, of course, provides the interface between an office and its users. It connects the IP offices of the member states to each other and to our global IP systems, and it provides for the public a window onto the extremely rich collections of data that are generated by the IP system and that are becoming increasingly important sources of passive technology and of business and economic intelligence. Our programs in this area are now quite extensive, and they're attracting a very positive interest from our member states, from users worldwide of the IP system and from the general public. And this is the area in which we are experiencing the greatest demand from the least developed and developing countries for technical assistance. The number of officers worldwide that are now using WIPO provided IT systems grew from 61 to 72 last year, and the list of outstanding requests is quite long. Likewise, as another example, demand for assistance in establishing technology and innovation support centers, which offer a means of spreading access to technology across the whole community, is very, very high. We have 36 projects underway in this regard and some 320 such technology and innovation support centers around the world. The highlight of the last year, however, was the successful conclusion of a new multilateral treaty, the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled. I should like to extend our thanks to the government of the Kingdom of Morocco for the outstanding arrangements that it provided for the Diplomatic Conference and for the very warm and generous welcome that the government and people of Morocco extended to all of the delegations. I also congratulate the government of Morocco and the president of the Diplomatic Conference, Minister Mustafa Halfi, the Minister for Communications of the Kingdom of Morocco on the very successful outcome. As Ambassador Svekic has mentioned, the success in Marrakesh resulted from the extraordinary engagement and commitment of the member states. Five meetings and open consultations were held in the six months that preceded the holding of the Diplomatic Conference and innumerable meetings, informal meetings of different groupings of ambassadors and member states. The negotiators worked day and night at the conference and the outcome I think was a wonderful result for visually impaired persons, for intellectual property, for the capacity of the international community, had to form a consensus around an effective solution to a clear need and for the organisation. The Marrakesh Treaty built upon the success of the Beijing Treaty in 2012 and the hope expressed by all of the delegations in Marrakesh was that the constructive cooperation that led to those two successors might be diffused into the future normative programme of the organisation. And in this regard, we have two items on the agenda of these assemblies that are extremely important. The first is the proposed design law treaty for which work is nearing completion. The proposed treaty would simplify and provide more accessible procedures for obtaining protection of designs. The Government of the Russian Federation has generously offered to host the Diplomatic Conference and has very much hoped that this exercise can proceed with a positive decision in these assemblies to build upon the successes of Beijing and Marrakesh. The second item concerns the way forward for the shared objective of providing effective protection for traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and intellectual property in relation to genetic resources. It is of the utmost importance to bring this work to a successful conclusion. The process has been long and arduous. It's hoped that the member states can in these assemblies find an expression for the mandate of the Intergovernmental Committee that can be embraced by all delegations. And it will certainly be one of the main priorities of this organisation in the coming year to progress this work to a good outcome. Looking beyond the immediate agenda of the assemblies and of the organisation, it's very clear that the tendency for intellectual property to move from the periphery to the centre of the economy continues. The rise in the value of intellectual capital and intangible assets, the recognition of the fundamental social and economic importance of innovation and the ubiquity of the internet and of devices for accessing it and in consequence of entertainment and content and creative works are all contributing to this movement towards the centre of intellectual property. In previous years, I've said some words about the innovation part of this equation. And if you'll permit me, I'd like to say this morning just a few words about the creativity and creative content part. Our studies across some 40 countries with very diverse economies, developing economies, least developed economies, transition economies and mature economies indicate that on average, the creative industries contribute some 5.2% to GDP and some 5.4% to total employment. In some cases, this rises to 11%. So huge economic value is generated by the creative industries in addition to their extremely positive social and cultural impact. The past 20 years has witnessed the steady migration of creative works from analogue formats and physical distribution to digital formats and distribution over the internet. This has been a classic process of creative destruction and it's a normal part of any such process that value shifts. But what is worrying in the transition that we are witnessing from analogue to digital is the seemingly avoidable and inappropriate loss of value to creators, to performers and to the creative sector. There have been a multiplicity of studies that have sought to measure the extent of this phenomenon and discussion abounds as to methodology and as to magnitude. But what is clear, whatever one thinks of these studies, what is clear is that the impact of illegal downloading is significant and it is very negative. While the value of digital sales has been rising, they have not been rising at the same extent that analogue sales have been declining and so value is being lost in this process. And that loss of value is of enormous concern to governments around the world and to the creative industries worldwide. The solution is elusive. Nevertheless, I think that there is increasing recognition that a large part of the solution is the creation of a seamless global digital marketplace. Now, actually, by virtue of technology, we already have a seamless global digital marketplace. However, it is an illegal one. And the task is to establish a legal, seamless global digital marketplace. It should be as easy to get content legally as it is to get it illegally. Creation of such a marketplace is an extremely delicate and complex process, not the least because most of the building blocks have to be put in place not by governments and the public sector, but by the private sector, the enterprise sector. And there is, I think, some reason for optimism compared to the situation 10 years ago that this is happening even if slowly. The seamless global digital marketplace will function on data, more precisely metadata. It's data that will connect consumers with creative works via a diversity of platforms behind which will operate mechanisms for clearing rights to use and payment systems. Why am I mentioning this this morning? The reason, there are many reasons, actually, but one of the reasons is that there is an unprecedented opportunity in these developments for making the developed, developing and the least developed countries part of the global digital marketplace. The developing world has traditionally been rich in content and poor in distribution. It's home to some of the finest creators and performers in the world, but the opportunity for these creators and performers to connect with global markets has been limited. Now, the internet is a global stage. The world record, for example, for the number of hits on YouTube is held by the Korean singer Psy for the hit Gangnam Style, which has been viewed 1.8 billion times. Worldwide, there are 2.7 billion people online. Internet penetration in the developing world will reach 31% by the end of this year. In addition, more and more content is being delivered through mobile platforms and there are, according to the International Telecommunication Union, some 6.8 billion people with mobile or 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, 5.2 billion of which are in the developing world. To take advantage of this new world, this emerging world, we have two projects that I should like to mention very briefly that I believe will help in the process of connecting creators and performers in the developing world with the nascent global digital marketplace. And they both relate to data management since data is the basis of this market, the basis on which this market operates. The first is seeking to develop a new voluntary quantity assurance standard for collective management organizations and those, of course, are the entities that hold data on creative works in order to manage those works on behalf of rights holders. And the aim here that we have is to provide some guidance and support for collective management organizations in the developing world to achieve high performance levels of transparency, accountability and governance for the benefit of the rights holders that they represent. The second project aims to enhance the IT systems for the management of data by collective management organizations because we believe that effective IT systems will not only allow the collective management organizations to give more effective performances, more effective services to performers and creators, but will also allow them to participate in the global digital marketplace to a much greater extent. And we'll ultimately, we believe, assist the developing world in translating its cultural and creative assets into commercial assets. For this organization to make its mark and to contribute to the increasingly complex and sophisticated world of intellectual property, or the world in which intellectual property operates, it needs first-class staff. I should like to express my gratitude to the women and the men of the International Bureau who have contributed so much to the many successes of the organization over the course of the last 12 months. And I should also like to express my gratitude to the member states for their unceasing engagement, commitment to the organization and support for it. Thank you.