WIPO Press conference 1 March 2021

Sorry, just some technical problems here.

Thank you all for being here with us today.

I'm going to hand the floor over to Director General Darren Tang.

[Other language spoken]

For some opening remarks and then Carsten will present this year's statistics.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks morning everyone and and good to meet you all since we last met, I think that was in December last year.

A couple of updates to share with all of you.

The new team of Assistant DGS and Deputy DGS has taken office since 1st of January.

Very happy to have them on board.

And we've been working very hard over the last few months to get the ball rolling to the new term.

And the vision that I shared with you the last time and we met about how can we look at IP not just from its legal and technical angles, but from a much broader perspective as a catalyst for job creation, attracting FDI, driving enterprise growth, supporting economic development, and, and facilitating social vibrancy, right?

These are the broaden areas of work in which we want to do, uh, and, and, and this is the work that we want to be able to share with you over the next few months, over the next few years, right?

As we settle into our terms, Uh, what have we done since then to help to start to bring these aspirations into reality?

We have created a new sector called the Innovation and IP ecosystem sector that's headed by one of our AD GS and that will be looking at IP from the enterprise and economic perspective.

How do we help countries use IP to move ideas to the market?

How do we help countries look at IP from a broader angle so that they can use IP as a tool for growth and development?

One of the areas of focus that we will be looking at in especially will be on small and medium enterprises.

I think many of you when you deal with IP issues, the headlines tends to revolve around big companies.

But actually we find that there's a unmet demand from many of the small and medium enterprises around the world, which is a large part of the economy of, of many of developing countries that they also need to use IP to develop themselves.

We also need to support the, the, the startups in many of these countries, the increasing aspirations for innovation that my colleague customer talk about.

But the point is that innovation and creativity is not just confined to one region, it's confined to and it's now increasingly broadened throughout the rest of the world.

And so in this new phase of our work, we will reach out to SMEs.

We will also step up our efforts to reach out to individuals.

We will be spending time and focus on use as a special category of of stakeholders that we want to talk to.

We'll be looking at how can we support inventors and creators.

We have initiatives in the pipeline that we hope to share with you over the next few months that would reach out and support these individual groups.

And the point is that we want to just go beyond the traditional people involved in the IP ecosystem to start reaching out to new groups of people who are all involved in inventing and creating.

And we need, uh, help to bring their ideas and inventions to the market.

Uh, the big news from today's figures that we will share with you very shortly is that innovation remains resilient, uh, with filings not dropping like the way they did during the 2008 financial crisis.

Why is this?

So we have a sense that perhaps the pandemic has acted as a disruptor in some areas and and maybe it's an accelerator in some areas.

I have to caveat that the figures that you're we're going to share with you are figures from activities that started before the pandemic hit us.

This is 2019 figures.

But as the as the funding activities happened in 2020, the impact on the pandemic could have been that they've decided not to file, but that's not been the case.

So I think the trend is that innovation remains resilient and the sense is that the world needs more innovation, as I shared with you the last time we met during a crisis.

And necessity, as they say, is often the mother of an invention.

And I think this translates to more resilient IP filings than, uh, than than some have expected.

The other big message I want to share of you is that the overall decade long trends are also unaffected.

And what are these trends is that innovation continues to spread throughout the world with Asia now driving these trends.

And I think last year we saw Asia, uh, crossing over the 50% threshold of IP filings.

In other words, more than half of all IP filings in before Waipu comes from Asia.

But beyond Asia, right, we're also seeing trends of pickup in IP filings in other parts of the world.

I think my colleague customer share view some filings from Saudi Arabia, from Chile and these are examples of regions right outside of the Northeast Asia region where where you're beginning to see a pick up in IP filings.

And therefore we think a sense that innovative activities are are growing in these areas as well.

So with that, I will pass the floor over to Carson, my colleague to share view some of the more detailed numbers, facts and figures.

And I look forward to engaging with you at the course of this session.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Director Genbo.

Good morning, everyone.

So I'd like to elaborate a little bit on the results of Wipers international filing systems.

Let me start with with patents, which as you know protect technological inventions.

International patent filings under Wipos Patent Corporation treaty grew by 4% in 2020 to reach close to 276,000 applications.

Now what does that mean?

4% growth is in line with the growth growth trend over the past decade and in fact it's even somewhat above that trend.

As the Director General mentioned, in light of the pandemic and it's economic fallout, this is somewhat surprising.

And by comparison, during the last crisis, the global financial crisis, we saw a drop in PCT filings by 4.8%.

That was in 2009 and since then we have only had positive growth.

Now looking at individual countries, we do see that the crisis did prompt declines in international pilings filings from certain countries, notably Japan which declined by 4.1%, Germany which declined by 3.7%.

But these declines were offset by strong growth elsewhere.

Notably United States grew by 3%.

United States is the second largest origin and China grew by by 16.1%.

China is the largest origin under the PCT and as the Director General mentioned, we also saw growth from certain other countries.

Saudi Arabia, for example, registered growth, you know, almost doubling its PCT filings to close to 1000 filings.

And you know, you see that in different parts of the world.

Malaysia registered growth of 26.2%, Chile registered close growth of 17%, Singapore close to 15%, Brazil 8%.

So, you know, the picture has really been mixed, but it is certainly the case that some countries have seen an increase in their participation in the international patent system.

Now, do these figures indicate that everything is fine in the world of innovation?

I think as the director general pointed out, I would say they are encouraging, but they are an incomplete part of a broader story.

So it is of course the case that most of the patents that are filed under the PCT system that were filed in 2020 relate to innovations that took place earlier, that took place before the onset of the pandemic.

Nonetheless, the fact that there wasn't a sharp cutback in international patenting suggests that companies continued to invest in the commercialization of their technologies during the pandemic.

I would also say that the continued growth of PCT applications attests to the ability of the international patent system to function during the pandemic.

This wasn't entirely obvious at the outset of the pandemic.

While, of course, digitization had already reached an advanced stage before the pandemic, the filing of partner applications still relies on human input and human interactions that were disrupted due to the containment measures.

Many offices around the world, including WIPO, had to adopt their procedures and their processes, but in the end, the system cope quite well.

Looking at patenting across fields of technology, we see particularly fast growth in audio visual technology.

In fact, the technology we're using right now in audio, visual technology, the number of published patent applications grew by close to 30%.

Big Asian technology companies, Huawei, Sony, BOELG, Samsung are some of the most dynamic innovators in the field.

In this field.

It's also interesting for us to see Byte Dance, the owner of TikTok, appeared for the first time in the top 50 lists of of PCT users.

Other IT related technology fields, computer technology and digital Digital communications also saw rapid growth in 2020 and that is an extension of a past trend and so did pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

[Other language spoken]

It's important to point out that these patterns relate to pre pandemic innovation.

So this is not a story of how the crisis has affected and the direction of innovation and I hope we can begin to tell that story next year.

Let me turn to the Madrid system for the protection of trademarks.

As you know, trademarks is the form of intellectual property that protects product brands, company brands.

Around 64,000 international trademarks were filed under WIP OS Madrid system in 2020 and that represents a decline of 0.6% / 2019.

So we do observe A relatively small decline under the Madrid system and in fact, it is the first decline since the global financial crisis of 2000.

9 This stronger response of trademark findings to the economic crisis is not surprising.

Historically trademark filings have always very stronger with the business cycle as the introduction of new products and the new creation, the creation of new companies slows during times of economic downturn.

Looking at the goods and services classes in which international trademarks are filed, the most specified class in international applications is, is, is class 9.

It's the class where that relates to computer hardware, computer software, electronics products and that is quite consistent with the fast growth in IT related technologies that we observe in the case of international patent filings.

One interesting nugget is that among the top ten classes, there are two classes, Class 10 and class 5, that cover surgical instruments, medical instruments, pharmaceuticals, other medical products.

And they were the classes that actually saw the fastest growth in 2020.

And since in the case of trademarks, the delay between creation of a brand and when it shows up in the international treatment system is is much faster, I don't think it's leaning out of the window to say that, you know, the pandemic has played some role here.

And so we do see, you know, more products related to personal protective equipment, for example, entering the marketplace and, you know, that we see reflected in international trademark findings.

Final note about The Hague system to protect designs industrial designs.

As you know, industrial designs relate to the ornamental and aesthetic features of products.

Applications under The Hague system, which is still a much smaller system compared to the PCT system and the Madrid system, declined by 1.7% in 2020, and it the number of applications was 5792.

In the case of industrial design applications, we also like to look at the number of designs in total that are covered by these applications.

And there we actually saw a sharper decline of 15% to 18,580 designs.

And this is in fact the first decline, decline in the use of The Hague system since 2006.

The Hague system kept growing even during the global financial crisis, and now for the first time, it has seen a decline.

Like trademark applications, design applications are more exposed to the business cycle and you know, we clearly see that the pandemic has left the mark on the use of the international design system.

So these would be the general observations I would have about the results.

Very happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

You'll also see there's a part in the press release on our arbitration mediation activities and we're happy to take questions.

On that.

Opening to questions I have Satoku.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for taking the question.

[Other language spoken]

When you look at the top five countries, China, US, South Korea is up and while Japan, Germany are down.

Could you tell me the reason why the application fall in both countries?

And then also if you could tell which sector was the biggest drop in both Japan and Germany?

And also you mentioned that pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

[Other language spoken]

Big growth in the chemistry.

Could you give me, if you, if you have, could you give me the share of the patent application which which are related to COVID-19 tools including?

[Other language spoken]

And vaccines.

And then also in the opening remarks, DG, you mentioned that about the trend saying that innovation remains resilient and then the world needs more innovation.

But as you know, the India and South Africa at the WTO put has put a proposal on TRIPS waiver.

And I'm wondering what is your view on this given the fact that the other international Pharmaceutical industry saying that each time patent is taken away, it's cheating effect on the innovation?

[Other language spoken]

Kasim, you want to answer the the statistics and then I'll say I'll take I'll take the IP and help question.

[Other language spoken]

I'm afraid I can't immediately answer some of the very specific questions that you asked, for example, the technology breakdown in some of these countries.

I don't have these figures in front of me, but you know, if maybe you could get in touch with us, you know, we are very happy to put together these statistics for you as to why we see growth in the case of the Republic of Korea, the United States and China, and we saw declines in Japan and Germany.

I ultimately also don't have a good answer for that maybe except in the case of China.

As you know, the Chinese economy has performed in relative terms.

That's important better than than the rest of the world.

So in that sense, I would almost compare us to the car industry.

You know, we're also the car industry has seen, you know, much stronger demand from China compared to other countries around the world.

So to some extent, I think the differential, you know, economic growth path in light of the pandemic is an explanation, but it's not a complete explanation.

And you know what other factors they are to explain, for example, why Germany and Japan, you know, indeed saw declines in the, in the number of filings.

I I I don't have an answer for that.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for your question on, on this IP and health issue, as I shared with everyone the last time we met this, this is a very complex issue because it involves not just IP, but also supply chain logistics involves manufacturing, it involves distribution, it involves storage.

Uh, and so this is an issue which, it's not just something which, why put on its own, you know, can, can have a perspective.

It's, it's something in which we need to work closely with the World Trade Organisation and with the World Health Organisation and with other relevant UN agencies to try to address.

So I'm very pleased that today, uh, we have for the first time an African and female DG of WTO, DG Gozi, who's taking office and I work, look forward to working very closely with her as well as with DJ Tedros at the World Health Organisation to find holistic solutions to, to complicated matters.

That said, what Waipu has done is that we've been working very much, uh, to support member states who need help and advice from us to find the right kind of legislative framework on the right kind of advice on how to find the relevant balance that they need to have within their own different countries to, to address these issues.

Uh, we also continue to provide information and support to, to any other UN agency that needs, needs our help.

Uh, we continue to have a trilateral agreement with the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation to address IP and health issues.

Uh, we have joined the board of the medicine patents pool.

Uh, since we last spoke, that's been a new development.

The medicine patents pool, as you may or may not know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a not-for-profit entity that was started under the auspices of the World Health Organisation.

And I think umm.

Someone can give additional details, but we've joined the the governing board of the medicine patterns pool as an observer, not with, with no voting rights, but that's essentially the same status as the world organisation to bring our expertise and our and our support right to the work that they need to do.

And what they do is is interesting.

They, they negotiate IP licences with, with countries that need help.

And, and, and I think this is the way in which we can support.

So I think, I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a complicated issue, but we're here to support now.

Thank you, Nina from AFP.

[Other language spoken]

Hi, thank you for taking my question.

[Other language spoken]

Maybe following up on.

The previous it seems.

Like China has really dramatically increased its.

Its lead as the world leading patent filer, which position it took only last.

[Other language spoken]

That it has to do with I guess the the stronger position that China may have been in this past year, but how much of.

It do you think is due to that and do you think this?

Is this sort of?

Pulling ahead is going to continue going.

Forward also it's also wondering if you might know for comparison issues how many patent filings China had in year 2000 to sort of compare?

[Other language spoken]

How big the leap has.

Been and then on digital and computer.

Technology which seems to have been grown quite dramatically.

I'm sorry I.

Didn't I wasn't able to.

Follow the entire press conference.

You may have mentioned you may have covered this already, but could you say if?

This is is closely linked to the.

Pandemic and the lockdowns and.

Or if.

There's no connection.

[Other language spoken]

Kasin, you want to take this and I'll answer some expects, OK?

So I leave the difficult part.

Well, thank you for that question.

I think to maybe reply to your last question, which is a bit easier, as we're trying to make clear at least the patent filings that we present today, we can't relate them to the impact of the pandemic.

Usually the delay between when patents are filed in the national office and the time they arrive at WIPO is, is 12 months.

So for most of the inventions that reached WIPO in 2020, these would be inventions that took place before the onset of the pandemic.

So I think, you know, we, we, we can't really say anything about the pandemic on the basis of the patent files.

Somewhat different in the case of trademark findings where I pointed out that the delay is much shorter and you know, looking at the classes, you know, that are that essentially cover medical products, personal protective equipment, there actually seems to be an increase in, in trademark findings.

Now, in the case of China, it's, it's of course very difficult, you know, to, you know, predict, uh, how filings will evolve from one year to the next year.

Umm, maybe, you know, looking at this historically, it's certainly the trend that over the last decade and you know, even going back further into history, you know, the growth rate in international patent applications from China has been, has been very ****, has been, has been higher compared to other countries.

And you know, that sort of explains by China is now the largest origin under the PCT.

I think the one observation I would make about China is that the base of patent applicants in China is really broadening.

You know, some eight or nine years ago it was maybe one or two companies that dominated international patent filings.

I think now we have around I think 12 or 13 Chinese companies that are in the top 50 PCT applicant list.

These are for the most part, multinational companies that invest a lot in research and development, that have multinational operations that of course have, you know, strong interest in seeing their patents protected around the world.

And, you know, the Chinese economy is is of course large.

And, you know, the use of the patent system in relative terms is still a bit young.

So that, you know, there is this dynam dynamism in China.

I think, you know, that is something that, you know, has to do with, you know, the state of the Chinese economy and the Chinese innovation system as it as it is.

But at least from our viewpoint, you know, because every year we look at, you know, who are sort of the top entities in the PCT and you know, we see a growing base of of Chinese applicants that I think you know, very much reflects the growth of the Chinese innovation economy.

Nina, thanks for your question.

I, I think I've got, I've got three points to share of you that that you might find interesting.

I think first, when you look at the Chinese growth in patterns, it mirrors the, a larger trend right there where pattern implications from Northeast Asia has really mushroomed in the last 10 years.

So it's not just China, but it's Republic of Korea, it's Japan, Of course, Japan was the 1st and then followed by China, Republic of Korea.

Uh, so it's, it's a trend that's not just within that within China, but the trend within that part of Asia.

Uh, so that's first, Second thing though I want to say is that as I said at the beginning of this press conference, there is a story that if you look at, you zoom out, you look at it from a 10/15/20 year perspective, right?

That innovation and patterns, trademarks and design filings as a marker of innovative activities or as a marker of creative activities, because trademarks and designers are very much connected to aesthetics and brands and all of that.

But it's a larger, it's a larger by weather or bellwether of economic innovative activities, uh, has has become a lot more globalised.

So you find a lot more, uh, trademark pattern and design filings coming from other parts of the world.

It's not as if that filings from the traditional sect, traditional parts of the world, US and Europe have, have, have decreased.

It's just that the rate of change, the acceleration has become a lot more stronger in, in Asia.

Uh, and when I talk about Asia, I'm talking about Southeast Asia as well.

I'm talking about the Middle East, I'm talking about South Asia.

So in all these regions, right over 1015 year trend, right, you've seen a tremendous increase in innovative activity.

And, and that's why, umm, you know, it's our belief that Waipu that, that, that, you know, innovation is global and innovation, you know, is, is, is become a worldwide phenomena.

Carson sheds statistics from, from, from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil and Chile.

And that's, that's, that's across really across the globe.

So I think, I think to me, the big story is that innovations become a lot more globalised because more and more countries are looking at innovation, right, as a way of driving economic growth.

More and more economies are looking at innovation as a tool for growth and development.

And then the third thing I'm just going to share with you is that, umm, that's, it's about how Waipu can help this and support these trends.

We are really held here to help innovation and creativity from anywhere in the world.

That's why we want to focus on the SMEs.

That's why we want to reach out to the inventors and the creators.

And that's why over the next few weeks and months, right, you hear initiatives that were rolling out, they will push us in the direction.

It's not new work for Waipu, but we're we're giving it extra Philip right to the creation of a new sector called IP and innovation ecosystems by naming this year's war IP day, which is on May 6th of April.

The theme would be SMEs from IGSM market.

So these are some of the things in which I want to just add to the beyond the stats, right?

There is a large trend that's going on here.

It's exciting and it's, it's, I think it's, it's something which uh, gives, gives us, gives all of us a lot of meaning and purpose of what we do right, which is support now innovation like anywhere in the world.

Thank you, director general.

The director general needs to leave at 11:45.

[Other language spoken]

I have Peter and John Zaracosta.

So if there are questions to address to the director general, we can stay for a few minutes later with Carsten.

So, Peter, is your question to the Director General?

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for taking my question.

And I'm interested in innovation in Africa and particularly South Africa, where there is very little activity reported.

[Other language spoken]

I'm just wondering if the COVID virus is increasing the digital divide in terms of innovation or is this just a temporary hiatus?

[Other language spoken]

Thanks Peter.

If you, if you look at South Africa, they are the best performer in the entire continent on the Global Innovation Index custom.

I think they're #34 or #35 on the Global Innovation Index, we can give you the figures of that, but they're, they're, they're the best performer of, of innovation in the Global Innovation Index that measures a whole series of different metrics connected to innovation.

So I do think that South Africa is, is, is it's, it's putting a lot of resources, a lot of attention, a lot of energy into innovation.

It has, it has strengths across the board.

And, and that's, that's what I would say generally about Africa.

And then I'll share you three things about Africa that we're very excited about.

And I'll start with the youth as you know, Africa.

And again, I'll get somehow to give back two figures, but I believe that 65% of African of the African population, right, is 65% below the age of 30.

And so one of the big areas of pushing in right is how can we help youths who are our future innovators and creators to understand IP and feel connected to IP.

And that's why we need to move away from talking about IP purely from a legal and technical angle.

Doing that is not wrong, but it's not enough.

We now need to work hard to connect IP to the young people because if they're going to be our future innovators and creators, they need to feel supported in that journey.

And let me give you a sample of couple of African innovators and entrepreneurs that we have supported.

One of them and I, I will ask again, someone to share the story is this Kenyan entrepreneur, uh, who created a shoe company called Enda Enda.

She was a former UN official by the way, but she left that job to become a shoe designer in, in Kenya.

Uh, and she's done some amazing work in Kenya.

Her shoes have created jobs for for Kenya, fellow Kenyans.

The shoes are not being exported to the region and beyond the region.

You check out the designs, right?

They're really, really, really, really exciting.

And, and, and, and this is the kind of people we want to support.

Can we support the future?

And so, so one is to reach out to the youth and that means reaching out more strongly to the universities and the into the, into that demographic, right?

That we think will be really pushing the forefront of innovation in Africa in the years to come.

The second part is that Africa is very much an SME driven economy.

In many parts of Africa, the SMEs are easily 90 to 99% of the economy.

And if they're not using IP to support their own growth and to scale, then there's really a wasted opportunity there.

So that's why we are focusing on how can we support African SMEs.

[Other language spoken]

One SME, uh, that has been, that has been, uh, you know, again from Kenya, I'm trying to find other examples, but is this, is this a remittance company called M Pesa?

M Pesa is looked at the ecosystem in Africa that there's a lot of people who are unbanked.

And rather than try to solve it by creating more bank branches, they say, why don't we look at the mobile phone penetration rates, which are very **** in, in Africa and create apps or, or digital technologies, right, that allow Kenya entrepreneurs to connect with their buyers and sellers and their finances through these apps and that's become very successful.

It's now being use in many other African countries, being exported to other parts of the world as well.

So again, how can we help SME like M Pesa grow and scale throughout the world?

How can we help them understand the IP is there to spot their, their, their, their aspirations.

And that's, so that's the second part of it.

The third part of it is that I think from the beginning of this year, and I ask again, I asked some to help provide the actual details.

But I think at the beginning of this year or, or last year, the African continent, right, came together and created the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.

And as part of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, right, they created an African continental free trade area, which again, it's a way to, to, to support the growth of entrepreneurship, enterprises, trade and so on, so forth, right, Intra African growth.

And we are also trying to work with, with, you know, with these platforms, right, to support not just certain countries in Africa, but the whole, the whole continent itself.

So, so I would, I would say that it's a really, really exciting region.

In the past, Waipu has helped to, to create technology and innovation support centres in a lot of the African universities.

More and more of the African universities are part of projects like Waipu research that attempts to link researchers and users in areas like neglected tropical diseases, tuberculosis, malaria.

I just, I just actually just launched the a workshop we had earlier this morning that brought all the researchers together from LDCs and, and developing countries and beyond Africa.

We are, we are, we want to also support, you know, Asian developing countries, those in Latin and Central America, right?

So a lot of the work that we're going to do in Waipo would be to take the expertise that we have, right and now connect the expertise to the men in the street, the renters, the creators, SMEs, the the, the, the enterprises and, you know, in different ways, right?

So I think that's really exciting and that's what we hope to do in the over the next few, over the next few months, next few years.

[Other language spoken]

Do you have time for one more question?

Like what's the time now?

I've got to go off.

You have to maybe just answer the we just that, that yeah, that the next.

[Other language spoken]

Can you hear me somewhere?

[Other language spoken]

I was wondering if you could.

[Other language spoken]

Through if a waiver was approved in the WTO either on patents for vaccines or trade secrets, how that would facilitate ramping up production around the.

[Other language spoken]

Countries that have the capacity but don't have the rights.

Right now.

What would be the benefits of doing this?

[Other language spoken]

Well, John, it's, it's a question, you know, that that's, it's a bit hard for more, you know, it's a bit hard for me to answer because that's really for, for the WTO members to, to, to answer for each individual country.

So I, I think it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit difficult for me to answer this question.

But I have to say this, where Waipu is here to support, as I said, individual member states who need our advice and, and help to put in place whatever frameworks they need to put in place in order to, to find the right balance between IP and health and other concerns.

They have other needs they need to address.

But it's not, it's not, it's, it's, you know, we can't talk about these things in except in a very contextual specialised area because these countries for their own needs, their own, their own capacities in different areas.

So I think, I think there's something which I will, I would say it's best left to each country to, to figure out, but we're here to support anyway we can.

[Other language spoken]

I've got to go off.

Yeah, yeah, we can stay with, stay with custom.

[Other language spoken]

Well, thank you everyone.

I, I wish you all the best.

[Other language spoken]

The, the, the Lunar New Year just finished.

It's 15 days on Friday, but it's significant as the year of the ox and the ox, you know, in, in it's an animal that is resilient, that is strong, that is diligent, that is patient.

And I think these qualities are the qualities that will take us through this year.

I wish you all the best.

I look forward to engaging with all of you.

I look forward to sharing with you all the exciting things that we're going to do over the next few months, next few years.

And thank you once again for being part of the this morning session.

I live in the good hands of Samar and and Caston and, and once again, I look forward to to to engaging with with, with all of you and all the best for the year of the OPS.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Carson is here.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for taking the question.

I just wanted to see if you would agree that it's it's logical to expect patent filings?

Might go down in the.

Coming year as a result of the impact.

Of the COVID in innovation in 2020 and given the time lag in filings.

And the second question simply on the issue of AI, a couple of years ago, if I remember.

Right.

Waipu said that Chinese companies made.

[Other language spoken]

I think it was around.

17 of the top 20.

[Other language spoken]

Are we seeing that trend continue or are we seeing greater diversity?

On in that market.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Nick, for these questions.

I'm afraid the last one I can't answer and we would need to go back to the data to look at this.

You know, 1 slightly challenging thing about artificial intelligence inventions is that they're not categorised as such in, in, in, in the standard patent classification.

And it is a bit more difficult to identify AI related inventions.

It also depends on the definition of AI, but we can certainly look into, you know, what, what, what we can do there.

On your first question about what to expect this year in light of the fact that, you know, the pandemic and its economic fallout probably, you know, has affected innovation activity in one way or another, and you're absolutely right.

I would expect, you know, essentially, you know, the innovative activity of 2020 to be reflected in patent filings in 2021.

At the same time, I'm not entirely sure what to expect, you know, for a number of reasons.

1 is that you know we already know that.

You know, different sectors and also different technology sectors were affected differently by the crisis.

So if you look especially at, you know, a lot of the IT companies and, and you just have to look at their stock market valuations, although they're arguably also driven by low interest rates, but some of the companies have actually done really, really well.

And you know, as far as we know have seen revenue growth and you know, they have also invested more in research and development.

We also saw, you know, of course, a lot of, you know, R&D investments in, in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, of course, linked to the, to the COVID vaccines.

But you know, it's, it's not clear whether to what extent that necessarily has come at the expense of other medical innovation.

And I would expect that sector also, you know, to have done quite, quite well.

I think another important aspect is that, you know, of course there is the question of how many innovations are in the pipeline.

But also, and you know, that's why I pointed out that the 2020 results was actually quite encouraging, you know, the willingness and also the ability of companies to continue to put money into commercialising technology.

You know, what we saw in the crisis of 2009 was that, you know, a lot of companies just didn't have the funds to support patent findings anymore as their revenue collapsed.

And at least that we didn't see in 2020 and you know, if Touchwood, we would see an economic recovery this year, I would also be quite optimistic that we don't see it this year.

So I think I fully agree on the promise of, on the premise of your question that I think a lot of, you know, what took place in 2020, you know, will determine the patent defe patent finding behaviour in 2021.

But I think there are lots of effects going in different directions.

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Are there any other questions?

Anyway, we are obviously here if anybody wants to follow up on other areas trademarks designs or, or the cyber sweating or the arbitration statistics.

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Just to remind everybody, this press conference is under embargo until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 2nd at 10 AM Geneva time.

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Apologies for the short delay in getting started and please let us know if you need to have.

Any follow up questions?

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