WIPO virtual press conference : online business

Well, thanks everyone for attending this.

We really appreciate your interest in the organisation and in this new service that we are launching today.

So the service has been for some time.

And now after a lot of preparatory work, for which I thank my colleagues, some of whom are online, Dennis Muratati in particular, after a lot of preparatory work, we're ready to launch and we are launching.

So what is it, the new service?

It is relatively simple.

It is the possibility of a digital time and date stamp of, if you like, a digital file.

So why would it do this?

Well, as you are all very much aware, we were already in a trend in the world towards the increase digitisation of business transactions and economic activity.

And that trend of course has been accelerated for reasons beyond all of our control by the current COVID-19 crisis.

So that a huge amount of economic activity is taking place online.

And well, I think many people would think that this trend to the acceleration of digital, the digitisation of economic activity will only continue even beyond the COVID-19 crisis, because we've all learnt obviously a lot from this crisis.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, it means that what we are seeing, seeing and asking more is that an awful lot of collaboration takes place online and that is within an enterprise where the workers may all be distributed physically, but also between enterprises.

And that leads to perhaps an increased vulnerability of digital files.

And what this new service will do or does is give you the possibility to authenticate the existence at a certain point of time of a file.

Why would you want to do that?

Well, you might want to do it because later there might be a dispute between the collaborating parties, whether within an enterprise, between the management and the staff or enterprises, or in a research collaboration about who invented what or who innovative what.

And that's the idea.

And the same applies in the creative industries.

It's not just the science and technology mechanism in the creative industries.

Now you know, much music is recorded in the distributed fashion where a digital file is sent from 1 performer to another performer to add a voice over or to add a voice track or to add an instrumentation.

So we are seeing a huge amount of data flying around the world, which is in a condition that is not yet ready to be protected by the formal intellectual property system.

Because to have protection in a formal intellectual property system, the song has to be mature or the writing has to be in publishable condition.

Or the idea that a number have been working on, or the data that a number have been sharing towards working out are not yet ready for a patent application.

They're not yet an invention.

They're not yet ready to qualify as a creative work.

And so in this respect, it adds a great deal of security to facilitate online collaboration because you will be able to show through this very simple and cheap procedure that this particular file you're in possession of on a certain date and at a certain time, and it's an unalterable record of that file.

So we think that it has many, many applications and this is what our market research is telling us as well to the stage that's often called in, in the innovation process of ideation, the development of ideas, which is terribly important.

And we all know that collaboration contributes significantly towards improvement of innovation outcomes.

So it adds an element whereby you can have more trust in sharing data across players because you'll be able to establish from a legal point of view, the proof that you were in possession of this file or these data at a certain period of time.

So that's the service, that's the idea behind it.

We think it's timely.

It's not a world first.

This service does exist at the national level in various countries, but we think that we can add value because we are an international institution.

We're specialised in the field of intellectual property and we think that proof coming from WIPO may be more acceptable to tribunals and courts around the world.

And that if we give it this authority, it does give a certain, it assists in this process of proof in legal proceedings, if ever it comes to legal proceedings or appreciations between parties as to who owns what.

So that's the service, very simple to operate.

You can go online, you can test it online and essentially you receive a token, a digital token which is the the basis of your unalterable record.

You do not have to disclose the contents of your file.

So this is a big advantage and it's very cheap.

So look, we have a a pricing structure which is trying to appeal.

We're very highly conscious that many people who might want to use this service will be start-ups, people who are just starting their enterprise Oregon, their idea and the development of their idea.

And so we are talking about 13 francs, Swiss francs for a bundle of 1000 tokens.

So this I think a very cheap service.

But if you think of data development and especially big data, the volumes that people deal with, they may have to use this service repeatedly and that's why it's priced at such a low level.

So perhaps I will stop at that point somehow.

Very happy to answer any questions.

And my colleague Dennis Muratati is there as a real expert in the area as well in the technology.

So I'll hand over to you.

[Other language spoken]

Ladies and gentlemen, please just identify yourself beforehand.

I see Laurent Swiss News Agency.

[Other language spoken]

But we want we want to see you.

[Other language spoken]

You know, I should have shaved for for that.

I I can assure you you don't want to see me now.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for the briefing.

I actually have two broader questions, if I may.

The the 1st in connection with the current crisis, the first one is do we have a broad ID of, of the number of patent requests that might have been filed in your international system in connection with the crisis?

And the second one is there have been a lot of debates ahead of the World Health Assembly around the principle of worldwide public common good.

And some including some leaders have have called for people vaccine free of IP.

So what are, what are your comments on that?

OK, so nothing about the digital timestamp, but look going to your first one.

What we have done is place on our website, we have a, a, a search service of patterns, not just international patent applications, but patent applications in 50 plantries around the world are all aggregated.

And we've placed a facility for making searching on COVID relevant technologies much easier.

So it's keywords that are offered to you and you can from your own keywords so that you can find technology now that's relevant.

And of course, we're covering vast field here.

Let's remember, because when you speak, you're Speaking of COVID relevant technologies, you're Speaking of not just the research work that's going on in respect to the vaccine.

Your second question, possibility of vaccine, but also treatments for ameliorating the the symptoms and also all of the medical equipment, you know, whether you're speaking about ventilators or personal protect equipment.

So it's a vast field that is of technologies that are covered and that's why we have offered all of these search terms to facilitate it.

What's the drawback?

Well, the limitation of it is, excuse me, first of all that patent applications are published 18 generally speaking, 18 months from their filing, OK, their first filing.

So if you were to file first in the United States, then you followed up with an international application under the PCT, we would publish that 18 months from the date on which you filed your first application in the United States.

So there's a lot of technology that is the subject of patent applications, but that is not yet public.

That's the patent system and it's how it's always been.

There are reasons for that for that period of time.

Amongst those reasons are the work that has to be done by patent officers in order to prepare the application and to provide with or with the interests of public, excuse me, with a sufficient degree of information about the patentability or the prospects of of success of the patent application.

For example, a search report which would locate similar what we call prior art or similar pre-existing applications or technologies which would indicate the strength or not of the technology which is the subject of the patent application.

So that's more or less where we are.

I think it's a very helpful service and it does give you a good idea of what is out there and in process, but with that limitation that I mentioned.

Now turning to your second question, well, obviously this is a question that is, you know, occupying the highest minds in government all around the world.

And as you mentioned, it was the subject of a resolution, you know, in the World Health Assembly.

Again, I would emphasise that through all, we're facing a vast field here.

So you spoke specifically about vaccines.

We've got all the other elements to consider as well, including treatments and the possibility of treatments.

I made a statement on this matter.

[Other language spoken]

It's about 3 weeks old, if I'm not mistaken, in which I set out certain considerations.

And I, I think that, well, let's just deal with vaccines alone, OK?

So for veins alone, what we're seeing is that there is a huge amount of public expenditure going into this.

So National Institutes of Health in many countries are funding research and development.

There's a public private partnership, CP, which is funding research and development in the development of vaccines.

So there's a huge amount of public sector interest.

There's also a huge amount of private sector interests.

There's a general rule of thumb around about 70% of R&D worldwide is funded by the private sector and performed by the private sector, and around about 30% is funded by and performed by the, sorry, did I say 70% private sector, 30% public sector.

So I think that what we need in the 1st place here is innovation.

We don't have a vaccine.

We don't have a proven tested and approved market approved treatment.

So we're in a situation which is where we are desperate for appropriate and good innovation.

I think we have to use the whole of the incentive structure that we have developed in order to encourage the innovation which will give us the vaccine, we hope, although this is a tricky matter of course, as you know, and which which may give us some useful treatments.

Now then comes the question of access.

So first you have to have information before you have the question of access.

The access question doesn't arise until you have something to have access to.

And I don't think we should lose sight of that.

You know, first stage of making sure we're getting the innovation.

As I said, there's lots of indications around the world that people are investing heavily in this in the public sector and in the private sector.

When it comes to the access question, well, look, there are provisions in international legal and there are provisions in national legal instruments which allow access or property, intellectual property rights to be overridden in certain circumstances, typically the emergency that we now have with COVID-19.

And I have no doubt that governments will use those provisions to ensure we do have fair and equitable access to any vaccine that may be developed.

Now in the process, you know, tough decisions are going to have to be made, tough decisions by governments that fund and tough decisions by private sector that fund.

And I think, you know, there are going to be extremely delicate questions that will arise of how to return some value to the innovator, which may represent simply recovery of research and development costs, but ensuring that we have affordable accessible treatments and vaccines.

Specifically for your question.

Now the whole vaccine area is subject to some rather specific cultural norms and indeed regulatory norms, which for example, see that each each year there is a sharing of research and development and data through The Who to develop the next season's flu vaccine.

So it's territory that has been tested.

It's not new territory.

I think you're absolutely right to say that, you know, people, there's a, there's a, a huge amount of anxiety in the community about, about the COVID crisis, huge amount of anxiety.

There is a need for confidence on the part of the whole world that there will be access.

We are facing a difficult political situation worldwide with the various first movements that are emerged explicitly or implicitly in approaches that governments are taking more generally to economic questions.

And I think we'll see all of these come together when, if and when we see a vaccine developed.

I've no doubt that wise decisions will emerge at the end because the demand is so strong for access.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for taking my question.

[Other language spoken]

The for his first question, I was wondering if you have any indication yet of what areas within the COVID relevant technologies you're seeing the most applications so far?

And then on the theme of the day, sorry, I'm just looking for my question here.

You, you mentioned that this isn't a first and that there are a number of national equivalents.

Could you, do you know, can you say how many there are, if you have any examples and how they've functioned in those countries?

Thank you very much.

Look, I believe they're quite well used in the various services that are available.

And so you might say, well then why add another one?

Because we add an internal dimension.

So given the extent of distrust that exists in the world today, and I'm speaking with political distrust, we believe that there is genuine niche, an opening for an impartial international authority that certifies the existence of a digital file at a certain period of time.

Now look, you can put together the, you can put in many of the names, but let's say country A, you know an enterprise in country A has a local digit timestamp.

They are doing business in Country B.

The political relations between those two countries are not famous, not great, not good, and country A enterprise gets into a dispute and has to come before a country B caught in relation to the dispute to resolve it.

Now, if they're relying on a country, A token digital timestamp, it might be less well received than if they are relying by the courts, than if they're relying on the digital timestamp of an international authority, an international organisation.

So we think that opening exists to reinforce trust and it's what we have been told in our sort of market research.

So that's the value I think that we can add in a period of political tension between many of the major innovation players in the world, an intense competition between all of those.

Now coming back to your first question, I can't give you a specific indication because you know as I said, there is this period of 18 months in which before publication of the patent application and much of the research that is taking place with respect to COVID technologies, of course is really current and up to date.

So there is a slight time lag that we are seeing.

But we do know from reports that for example, well over 100 projects for public and private for the development of vaccine taking place all around the world.

So there's a huge amount of activity.

Unfortunately, there's this little time lag before we see it translated into concrete results that this happened and that happened and these persons did that.

[Other language spoken]

I have a question that was emailed to me, Sir, for somebody who could not connect to the call and he'd like to know what the potential is for trademark applicants of wiper proof.

Well, I think trademark applicants like everyone else are involved at one stage in a creative process of trying to nail the mark, you know, So that might may be a fictional word or it may be a fictional symbol or a, a picture and some form of graphic or a combination of both.

And generally a huge amount of experimentation goes on in that process, which would typically involve, for example, you know, depending on how well resourced the enterprise is, it would involve perhaps an advertising agency, it would involve the enterprise itself, it might involve an outside designer.

So various actors, again, the phenomenon of of collaborative exercise.

And so the service has, you know, an application here also to establish a proof, an unalterable proof of the existence of digital file, which may be an idea, it may be a graphic, it may be in a fictional word at a certain point of time.

So I think there are applications in this process and a lot of huge effort goes into these, the development of Marx these days in branding.

[Other language spoken]

Does anybody have any other questions, Peter, go ahead, Sir.

Mr Gary, I was just wondering if we could just go over a little bit more this question of the global public good that we've heard about in the in the medical sphere and patent rights.

So what you're saying is it's not a 0 sum game, but it's actually dependent on individual governments.

Could you, you know, could you just elaborate a bit more on that?

OK, Look, I think you know, what is I have personally with this conversation is that we're thinking up hypothetical examples.

And until such time as we've got the, we've got the the actual scenario nailed and we know exactly what we're talking about.

[Other language spoken]

Because who knows, the vaccine might emerge in China, it might emerge in the United States of America, it might emerge in a private enterprise in China or a public institution in the United States.

So the the permutations are quite great.

I think what we're seeing now is a widespread expression of public concern that whatever emerges has to be available and has to be available on affordable, accessible terms and has to be distributed worldwide.

You know, those are the concerns.

I mean affordability and access on the one hand and global availability on the other hand.

And that requires us, I think, to think in these terms of global public good because what does that mean?

It means, you know, that what we're doing is thinking of the world as a community and, and we're thinking that we're interconnected and that, you know, if you should make the vaccine available in one country only, well, the country's not going to have any relations with anyone else or are not going to have people coming into it from other places until there is a level of security with respect to those other places, which means the availability of the vaccine.

So we see that there is a genuine global public interest in this being distributed globally because we're too interconnected for that not to happen.

And we've seen that with the rates of infection and the and the network infection.

So the answer has to be has to be looking at this in global terms.

I think now when you come to who gets what out of this, you know, as I said, we're a bit handicapped by not having the, you know, the exact in mind, You know, if this emerges from a government laboratory somewhere and it's been government sponsored and funded, well, we hope the government there is going to have a, a global community approach to the matter.

And while at the same time, you know, enabling it to continue its research and development, ensuring that innovation can take place and continued innovation can take place.

So you know, I, I've sort of tried to out the considerations involved here, but you know, we have the widespread demand and articulation of the demand.

Now we're waiting for some results and when we get the results we're now dealing with and how, how we can deal with it.

I think, and I would say the policy instruments are in place to be able to deal with it.