 Rwy'n credu'r cyffredin, ac y gallwn yn cael ei ddaint am gweithio. Rydyn ni'n cael ei ddweud. Rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r ddeud yn y ddau. Mae'n meddwl gweithio. Rwy'n meddwl i'r cyffredin i'w ddeud y ddeud yn y ddeud. overall I would say two very main points and a lot of subsidiary points, the two very main points would be I think first of all that despite the continued uncertainty and fragility of the global economy or uncertainty in outlook and fragility of the global economy, intellectual property performs well, when evaluated by the number of applications for intellectual property protection around the world. So in 2011, and this is what the data deals with, patent filings around the world grew by nearly 8%, grew by 7.8%, trademark filings grew by 13.3%, industrial design filings grew by 16%, and plant variety applications grew by 7.8%. So overall, you see that that is quite a good performance. Why? Well, Castans perhaps better qualified to answer that question than I am, but I would suggest, and Castan can supplement, that first of all it intellectual property concerns one of the best performing parts of the economy. It concerns the innovation economy, it concerns those parts of the economy where we see the new economy operational. And secondly, these overall figures of course reflect a steady intensification of globalization, because you can break the figures down into resident applications and non-resident applications, and in general over the years we see a rise in the number of non-resident applications, which means in general enterprises seek protection in broader markets. So I'd say these. Castan, do you want to add to that explanation? Why? Right. I think that is definitely the case. If you look at the growth in patent filings over the last 10 years, we do observe that the growth of what we call second filings, which are mostly filings of patent offices in additional offices outside of the applicants' original jurisdictions, we see relatively rapid growth in these filings. And I think that reflects, as the director general said, that applicants have an interest to see their inventions protected in a larger number of countries as they are more likely to engage in international business and are more likely to have operations in a larger number of countries. So certainly non-resident filings, as we call them at WIPO, are an important driver of filings at large. Okay, so the second development, big development I'd say, is that China's patent office became the largest in the world in 2011. So that's quite a significant development, really. It already had the largest number of trademark filings, and it already had the largest number of industrial design filings. Now, last year, it moved into the position of having the largest number of patent filings. So this is really quite a significant development. Of course, we have been talking about it in our meetings with you for several years now, but the trend continues, if anything, only intensifies. So those would be the two big developments that I think are revealed by the report at the whole. Now, if it's helpful, I'd be happy to point you to some of the data that are perhaps interesting in respect of patents and trademarks. I'll be relatively light on what I give you, but we can always supplement it. So, for patents, around 2.14 million patent applications worldwide in 2011. As a matter of interest, China received 526,000 of those. The US received, the United States Patent Office received 503,000 of them. And Japan, the third in line, received 342,000 of them. So that's the top three. We find that the majority of the top 20 offices experienced a growth in the number of applications, which is reinforcing the first point that I made. And perhaps the other thing to mention in respect of patents is, you know, we've also spoken in the past about the large number of unprocessed patent applications, or the backlog, and for the second year running, this went down by a slight figure. It went down by 4.9%. The preceding year, it went down by 3.3%. So, the number of unprocessed patent applications in the world in 2011, we estimate to be at 4.8 million. But the good thing, good news, is that despite rising numbers, the backlog, if you like, is declining. So, some of the policy actions put in place by patent officers around the world are paying off. For trademarks, let me say 4.2 million trademark applications worldwide. That was, as I said, a 13.3% increase. China accounted for 61%, or 62% of growth in trademark applications worldwide, because, you know, increase in trademark applications in China. And perhaps just 31%, actually, increase in trademark applications in China. And perhaps to signal that around the world there are some 23 million trademarks in force. And perhaps rapidly industrial designs to point out that, which grew by 16%, there were 775,000 industrial design applications around the world. One of the interesting things about design protection is the greater participation of middle income and lower income countries, especially the middle income countries. So, of the top 20 officers, nine of them are middle income countries. So, China again, the largest number of design applications with some 521,000. You see that's an enormous amount of the total number of applications. But good performances in countries like Turkey, Mexico, India. I can give you India up 16.7%, Mexico up 17.2%, Turkey up 17.6%. And in plant variety protection, perhaps just to say they grew by the number of plant variety applications grew by 7.8%, but I think I've already said that. So perhaps I'll stop with the detail and we can start the dialogue. Yeah, please cut. Sorry, cut. Let me head over to cut. Well, maybe let me just make two additional points. The overall growth and pattern filings worldwide in 2011, as the director general mentioned, was 7.8%. If you look at the performance of individual officers, there are of course a lot of differences. And I think if you look at the headline numbers you would find in the report, it is quite remarkable how well these numbers coincide with the economic performance in 2011 in particular. We see very strong growth from China, 34.6%, that in the year of 2011, when the Chinese economy was still one of the fastest growing economies in the world. We see a much slower growth rate in the developed economies in the United States. We have growth of 2.7%. We do see a relatively sharp decline of 5.4% at the European Patent Office. And that again, at its face value, is quite consistent with the economic difficulty through which European economies have gone in 2011. But we also see, and I think that is remarkable, relatively good performance from other emerging economies in particular India, we see growth of 6.4% and we see 13.5% growth from South Africa. So in principle, if you look at these results, they make sense in terms of the underlying economic performance in the respective economies. I should caution though that while we know that there is a correlation between the business cycle and pattern filing behaviour, this is not a one-to-one correlation and there are many factors that influence pattern filings from year to year. For example, the decline at the European Patent Office of more than 5% comes after more than 10% growth in 2010. So there are certainly year-to-year variations that are not entirely explained by the business cycle. The second brief point I wanted to make that in the area of patents, the growth of patent filings is relatively widespread across technological fields. However, the one technological field that has seen the fastest growth over the last five years is the field of digital communications. Again, this is something that we have known for some time. One could argue that this reflects on the one hand the technological opportunities that exist in this field. I think this is something that we observe every day as we use our smartphones. But arguably, it also reflects the fierce competition among innovating firms in this sector and the need for innovating companies to protect their intellectual property in the marketplace. Let me stop. These were two additional observations I wanted to make. You mentioned that the record was presented only now today because the print was made. I mean, it's for price, it's not very good. You have power with the share of power. And I hope it was the print when it was made. Thank you. If everybody here agrees to slam an embargo until tomorrow, does that bother you? Well, except that I think at some point we have instructed our colleagues to publish the document on the way at 3 o'clock. That can be stopped. If that could be stopped. No, no, no. It's okay. It's just great. No different next time. Okay, we're sorry about that. We'll make sure we rectify it for next time. But it's awful to get it fully out of the bank. We're not decorating 200 pages of it. Understood. Okay, we will fix it. And the ILO report today on gender. Okay, fine. Okay, noted. Hi, my name is Michael. I'd like to ask one question on China. If you look at all those books and figures, it looks like a resident application is huge. Does that mean that Chinese companies are filing more than multinational companies are filing more in Chinese soil? Well, it means both. But it means, in particular, first, I think what you can see with these figures coming out of China, whatever else you might say, you must say that their good evidence that China is embracing the intellectual property system. They are using it for an extraordinary extent. So they now file more patent applications, or more file patent applications are filed in China, in the Chinese office than anywhere else in the world. And all that, the resident applications is very high, Castan. Do you know what the resident application share is? In the case of China, I think it's more than 80%. I think it's more than 80%. Well, 79%. And the same applies for industrial designs and the same applies for trademarks. So in pure positive terms, it's very good evidence that they have really embraced the intellectual property system and are using it on a widespread basis domestically, you know, in their own enterprises. With all respect, these figures are all 2011, and China's growth has slowed down in the past year. Do you have any anecdotal evidence or any preliminary figures this year, which is just about over? Did you try to continue, or on the contrary? The anecdotal evidence that we hear from China is the trend continues. I can't say that that's going to be at the same rate, which was, for patents, what was it, 35%. So I can't say it's going to be at the same strength, but continued growth, both in the domestic filings and in their international filings. In 2012. John, AP. John, if you have a question, what is the digital year that comes to the House? Yeah, yeah. Master? Well, we don't yet have a system where these data are reported to us in an automatic fashion. What we do, we run a survey of intellectual property officers worldwide, where we send questionnaires, which by now are all electronic questionnaires to global IP officers in all the countries. It does take these officers a considerable amount of time to compile their own data and then send it to us. We have been quite keen to accelerate the data collection process as much as possible. But this is currently the best we can do. I should note, though, that we have improved the time lag with which these data are reported. Last year, in 2011, we for the first time reported data for the previous year. There used to be a two years lag. But I think for now, this is the best we can do that towards the end of the year. We come out with the national filing data from the previous year. Let me, if I may, add to that to say that if we were to report on 20 countries, we could do it in March. That reporting on the number that we do makes it a much more cumbersome procedure because in quite a large number of developing countries, their statistical capacity and their use of measurement indicators is somewhat limited. So it takes, that's one of the explanations. Sharper. I have a question. Do you have also a kind of an overview of the painting breaches? I mean, it's a heavy increase in China, but I mean they copy this. Well, we can't draw that conclusion from the data out there, but what I would say is that they're producing more. So they're producing more, which would suggest that they have a strong interest in the technological production being protected. Do you have a, I mean, your office, do you also know worldwide? We don't have statistics on infringement worldwide, because that's a question of a very disparate court system in every country, and it's very difficult to accept that. But the OECD is collecting data on infringement? Well, what the OECD has done, they have estimated the share of counterfeit and pirated goods. And they've raised them on legal proceedings and priorities in China's courts, for instance. Okay, I'm unaware of that. But what I would say is that the Chinese government itself publishes statistics on IP litigation. And the last time I looked at these statistics, they certainly see, you know, you see an increase in litigation, which is not surprising given that, you know, you have, you know, fast growth in the number of IP titles that have been issued. So what would expect more disputes to occur? John, and then Dan, sir. Yes, yes, but they're publicly available. Go ahead, Dan. I want to follow up on Stephanie's question about what we can define for 2012. Would you expect China to continue to be the largest patent office in the world in 2012 from the information you have so far? And how do you differentiate between residence filers and international filings? For example, if you have a joint venture, which is maybe 50-50 on by a Chinese foreign company, or even a wholly owned subsidiary based in China, do they come as resident, or are they? On the first one, yes, and on the second one, yes, we would expect China to continue to maintain its position as the biggest patent filing office. And on the second one, well, it's not on the ownership of a country, it's the place of business of the company that determines whether it's a resident or not. Right. Technically, the criterion we use is the residence of the first name applicant in the patent application. So if you have a subsidiary of a multinational company in, say, China, and that multinational company files locally using that subsidiary, it would be counted as a resident application, whereas if that company files from its headquarters in another country, it would be counted as a non-resident applicant. Okay, so just to be clear, fill in China, for example, filing would be considered a resident? Yes. So, Yogi, and then John. So that's a strong increase for the most general figures in South Africa, I don't know, for Africa. No, so we don't have a lot of statistics on the African continent, but maybe I can say that what is important in the case of Africa is to examine the statistics on the brands, because we know that the brands are a type of intellectual property that is more important for African economies. What is the most important thing? The brands. The brands. But Mr Gourig, d'a gwych chi ddyn nhw, Minister of the European Union, because I know that the Minister of the European Union is the only one who is willing to see you, but that's not the case. Minister of the European Union, what do you advise? Well, he didn't come, actually. We waited this morning, but there was a difficulty. I don't know if it was reported a little, but it's the Minister of Culture, so we're going to discuss creative industries, like music, cinema, dance, literature. It's mostly what we're going to talk about, and especially the improvement of the collective management system. This is the number of patents for the application's file, correct? So what is the significance of this? I mean, is it possible then that there are a lot of crappy applications filing for it in the US or anywhere? I mean, qualitatively, is the sheer number of this really that significant, where it doesn't take into account the quality? No, I think it's a very good question. We know that nearly a million patents were granted in 2011, so that is a very significant number as well. The number of granted patents worldwide in 2011 grew by 9.7%. So there was a significant growth in grants as well. But as in everything, an application for a patent, not all of them are accepted first. They are evaluated against the criteria of patentability where they're sufficiently inventive whether they're new or not. So that's one threshold to pass, and the other, on quantity, there is a lot of concern about quantity around the world, and it's a subject that's being studied closely, quality rather, a lot of attention being paid to quality around the world. So for a start, our chief economist is undertaking a research project on quality metrics, and Kastun, you might like to say something about that. Yeah, and maybe just to start with this, I think the challenge is that innovation really is an intangible phenomenon and is such to measure it. It is quite different, it's a quite different measurement challenge compared to measuring trade flows that cross border or to measure an economic output that firms themselves easily compile and data. The advantage with patent data is that patents leave a trace whenever an inventor files a patent application at a national office, but obviously we know that there is no one-for-one correspondence between the number of patent applications that are filed and their technological contribution or the economic value that these patents eventually generate. As the director general mentioned, many patents will never reach the end of the examination stage because the applicant may not find it attractive anymore to pursue the patent. Other patents are found not to comply with the patentability standards, so the office rejects them. The challenge with looking at grant data, which some people have argued is a more meaningful metric, is that grant data refers to applications that have been filed in many different years. If you look at the data we provide on patent grants, these are patent grants for 2011, but the applications underlying these grants may date from the late 1990s to 10 years ago, and who knows. In terms of providing a direct insight into the level of innovative activity that's going on in a particular point in time, patent grant data is not that useful. Ultimately, our intention with this report is to simply publish all the data that is submitted to us, and then it's available to the research community, to journalists, and you can draw your own conclusions from these data. Is it that you follow the grant? Yes, it's all in the report. If I may add just a couple of words on that, what is a good quality patent is the question. Is it a patent that has emerged from a process which was a good process and considered the appropriate databases and had a proper level of person considering it? Is it a patent that is not overturned on appeal? Is it a patent that generates a lot of money? Or is it a patent that makes a good social contribution? You might have innovations in the field of social media that make millions, if not billions. Is that a better quality innovation than an innovation in the medical field which saves lives for a disease that affects a population of only, say, 60 million people worldwide or 6 million people worldwide, an orphan disease? I think it's a very... I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm giving you some of the considerations that I think go into trying to assess what is a quality innovation, and it's not an easy question. I think the other is more about a third because a third is refused. But that's very, very general. Extremely general, as a measure. But it's in this kind of figure. That's what's in China? In general. But it's very... It's possible. Just one question concerning one variational ranking third place in the trademark. It's O-H-I-M. Yes, Europe. Europe. So it's the EU? EU. Sorry, EU. So it's the European Community Mark which O-H-I-M is Office of Harmonisation for the Intel Market. Dan and then Kathleen. Francis mentioned that the backlog of patent applications and the concern for number of years is easing slightly. You can see the policy developments and so forth. What exactly are they doing then? First, there is a consensus to use the PCT as the work sharing platform. So we are seeing more applications go through the PCT. This is one measure, a strengthening of the PCT which obviously involves a certain amount of reduced duplication. A second measure is that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has had a very aggressive programme to reduce its own backlog and it's reduced it to about 660,000 applications now and it was much higher. And the third one is Japan has also made a very significant effort going down from about 1.8 million to about 1.2 million. Right, and if I can complement this, what happened in the case of Japan and you know, quantitatively, Japan really is the biggest contributor to the reduction in the global backlog and that has to do with the fact that overall filings have declined in Japan and if you wish, that has given the Japanese office some breathing space and they were able to make the resources available for examining the applications that were on the backlog. So quantitatively, I don't have to figure here, it's somewhere in the report, but Japan really accounts for most of the reduction in the global backlog. And that climbed from 1.8 to 1.2 a period? 2007 to 2011. One also sees a small reduction in the backlog at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and as the Director-General mentioned, this is due to the resources that that office has put into examining patents. However, one does observe an increase in the backlog at the European Patent Office. And on a reduced scale, Brazil and India are both committing much more resources to the processing and patent applications. Catherine, and then I believe it's off now. I just have a question on the discussion that I've wiped by the moment on the committee of industry of the Alliance. It seems that Edward is interested in getting an instrument to harmonise a procedure. But there's a different stand but some countries would like to add them more quickly and developing countries are not in such a hurry. If I look at the numbers, I can see that it works very well for developing countries and middle-income countries for the moment. So maybe I would explain what they're not in such a hurry to have an instrument right now. The way I would interpret it is as follows and naturally I'm an optimist. I think that what we had from the assemblies, our annual meeting in October was a positive decision for this which really said there will be a design more treaty basically. And that having happened that positive decision having occurred we now see a greater level of engagement in the committee this week. And therefore I think delegations arrive who have not really been party to the negotiations up to now who are raising a lot of questions that they didn't raise earlier on because they weren't there. So I would interpret this week as a greater level of engagement as we're coming to the final stages of the negotiations. But more generally you're right that this is a form of protection that is very favourable or accessible to developing countries, middle income countries in particular. The statistics bear that out and it's very good. And design protection is an important part of innovation more generally. If you take the iPhone the estimate done on the iPhone with respect to the iPhone which added billions to the value of Apple, the estimates is that patented technology accounted for only 25% and the rest was designs and marketing innovation. 25%. That was the OECD's estimate. Sorry. Gentleman and drive. Interesting that Francis you're giving us such detail breakdown on the performance of the iPhone. Do you have similar data on what are the revenues generating from licensing for patent holders and franchising trademarks? No, short answer which is the same answer you received just here in the evening. But we are talking at the moment about how we can what we have to do to... You have some anecdotal stuff because this stuff is very dry. You have to bring in Francis Phillip from the licensing of the technologies or something otherwise it's too difficult. It drives us mad. We're talking at the moment about how we can improve in particular the market data on what's what the use of this. And if I may ask what is the... of these patent applications and patent proof, how many are actually going to the production page are in use because you know in Australia it's a gradient about this country but a lot of stuff doesn't make to the production. If I can first maybe answer your question and then say something about licensing that's definitely the case but I don't think this tells you much in a sense that we know that the innovation process is an uncertain process. Patents are usually filed at a relatively early stage in the innovation process precisely because you want to make sure that you have your claim on your invention. By the time you file a patent in many cases you don't know yet whether that technology will develop in a way that will have a market. And also you don't know how the market develops and that's maybe more striking in the pharmaceutical industry for many initially promising compounds you have only very few that make it to the marketplace and I think that just reflects the innovation process. There's also evidence that comes from surveys of inventors that has been done that literally shows that the distribution of patent values is highly skewed in the sense that less than 10% of all patents account for more than 90% of all the value that is generated by the patents. Yet again that doesn't reflect that these other patents are useless it just reflects to a large degree the uncertainty of the R&D process. Your question on licensing the short answer is we don't collect any systemic data on licensing largely because we don't know whom to ask at least officially there are no government agencies at the national level who compile these data most of these licensing transactions are private transactions. What are these stuff in the public to use to put you down? Right and we have in the World Intellectual Property report that was published last year provided some figures on that. I should also say I was at a conference recently at the OECD in Paris where there were a few interesting studies on particular sectors that presented some licensing related information for example for the pharmaceutical industry and I think more and more data more and more evidence is becoming available but I would say it's still a pocket here and there yes you can get something from the SCC filing doesn't yet give you a good global idea of how important are licensing transactions relative to let's say as a share of powers that are funded. It's even more difficult in the case of trade mugs and franchising I would say. We're currently looking into this. In these areas if you look at double digital growth in some of these companies franchising 67% growth in turnover. We've met these reports far more interesting for us. Now we've got the point so we're looking at market data I think and we'll have some next year at least. On PCP applications on page 65 there is a possibly company that looks like the Chinese company in the past right now. Is the first time the Chinese company ran for this time also? No it's not the first time. It's been passed quite way has ranked top in other years. I think last year it was Japan if I'm not mistaken and the year before it was China 19. And maybe just to clarify and not to confuse you that PCT figures are not new because we already published them I think in March of this year just for the sake of for the sake of comprehensiveness we are in this report which is really our flagship statistics report but that's also why we didn't put in the press release because these are not new figures. And then? Japan is still the main country of origin of these patents. Right? What does it say about I don't know if there is any correlation? If that's the case it simply means if you look at patent filings by origin you count not only the filings of in this case Japanese residents in Japan you also count the filings of Japanese residents all around the world in other patent offices and there we for example see that most of the patent filings of Chinese residents are in China and so the patent filings in China are still mostly domestically whereas you know for Japan for many European countries in the United States filing abroad is much more important and that explains why China is not maybe not yet who knows on top in the list of patent filings by country of origin. I have a what you did with the question what one is the if a company wants to protect the world by and it has to make the application in each country and the second question what is a utility model utility model is like a lesser patent a lesser patent sometimes called a petty patent a petty patent sometimes called a petty patent sometimes called a petty patent sometimes called a petty patent so it's a title that is granted typically for seven years or maybe between seven and ten years rather than 20 and without an examination so it's quite interesting to see it has been quite extensively used historically by Germany Japan now China and Korea and it's quite interesting to see in those countries graphs which might typically go you know here starting point for the number of patent filings and here's the number of utility model filings and as technology becomes more sophisticated the patents go up and the utility models go down and they intersect and you can see that very clearly over 30 years for Japan well if you were for example inclined to follow anando de Soto you know and his theory about property rights then it is getting people used to property in intangibles in one and getting them used to the whole property system in intangibles so that would be one another more simple explanation is that it caters to a lower level of technology so you might have farm you know agricultural innovation at a less sophisticated level than nuclear physics or molecular biology covered by utility models typically actually historically in Germany they grew out of design protection what happened in Germany is that there were such long delays in the 19th century in the grant of patents that people started farming industrial design applications to protect the inventions and that mutated into the utility model