Francis Gurry Addresses WIPO General Assembly

The evolution of technology, economy and society in recent years has raised a number of challenges of a fundamental nature for this Organization. The most fundamental of all is perhaps the attention that is directed at intellectual property (IP). As a highly specialized subject matter, IP enjoyed many long and quiet years in the shade before, quite suddenly, in the last two decades, coming under the full glare of the blazing sun of public opinion and scrutiny. The management of this climate change in the world of IP is itself a major task.

In this regard, it is useful to remember that IP is not an end in itself. It is an instrumentality for achieving certain public policies - most notably, through patents, designs and copyright, the stimulation and diffusion of innovation and creativity on which we have become so dependent, and through trademarks, geographical indications and unfair competition law, the establishment of order in the market and the countering of those enemies of markets and consumers: uncertainty, confusion and fraud. In the end, our debates and discussions are about how IP can best serve those underlying policies: whether modifying the international framework will enhance or constrain innovation and creativity and contribute to their diffusion, and whether it will add confusion, rather than clarity, to the functioning of the market.

There are a number of developments that risk impairing the capacity of the IP system to deliver on its basic mission of stimulating innovation and creativity and contributing to market order. WIPO needs to anticipate and to address the implications of these developments.

The patent system

A first development is the infusion of technology into every aspect of our daily lives and into every part of economic existence. As the trend has accelerated, the economic value of innovation has increased and, with it, the desire to acquire property rights over the frontiers of knowledge. The functional consequence of this trend is that the system is becoming a victim of its own success. Patent Offices are choking on demand and struggling to perform in a manner that is timely enough to be responsive to the needs of the economy. There are an estimated 3.5 million unexamined patent applications in the world today. The quality of the output of Patent Offices, pushed to cope with such strong demand, is also under critical scrutiny.

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) was designed to provide a multilateral means of dealing with the growth of demand...