[As delivered]
Ambassador Alfredo Suescum, Chair of the WIPO General Assembly,
Excellencies, Ministers,
Heads of IP Offices,
Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
Good morning and welcome to the Sixty-Sixth Series of Meetings of the Assemblies of the WIPO Member States.
We are delighted to welcome more than one thousand six hundred delegates – our highest ever – including a record 40 Ministers and Vice Ministers and nearly 100 Heads of IP Offices. This is truly the world’s largest gathering of global IP leaders.
It is also my joy to share that the WIPO family has grown. Two weeks ago, the Federated States of Micronesia joined the WIPO Convention, becoming our 194th Member State. Please join me in welcoming them to WIPO and their first GA with a warm round of applause!
Global Landscape
Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
We meet at a time when the storms in our world seem to grow larger and stronger by each day. Political conflict, economic uncertainty, technological acceleration and societal shifts all seem to be converging to disrupt our world in a way that is unprecedented.
But in these troubled times, I believe that it is more important than ever to remind ourselves of what we share in common and what unites us. And here at WIPO, what brings us together is our belief in the human spirit of imagination, invention, innovation and creativity.
This unique quality of humankind gave us fire, the wheel, agriculture, cities, medicine, science, poetry, music and the arts. And within our lifetimes, conquered illnesses, extended the human lifespan, harnessed new forms of energy, given us new avenues to share our stories with the whole world, and revolutionized the way we work, live and play,
As the global IP community, our common and shared responsibility to humankind is to nurture this spirit, and channel it into what is good for all.
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This defining mission of supporting innovators and creators from around the world does not exist in isolation, but within a global context. As the global agency for IP, innovation and creativity, we have a broad and unique vantage point and I would like to share three trends that are shaping the global innovation ecosystem of today.
First, despite challenges and headwinds, global innovation activity remains resilient. Every minute, more than 40 IP applications are filed somewhere in the world. Since 2018, over 20 million applications have been made each year, including more than 23 million in 2023. This is 150% higher than in 2010.
Beneath these numbers is a less visible but deeper transformation in where value is now created and stored. As enterprises and countries innovate, create and digitalize, what is valuable is shifting from tangible to intangible assets like IP, data, brands, know-how and others. WIPO estimates that the global value of intangible assets has reached almost $80 trillion last year, more than the size of the world’s largest economies put together.
This trend will only grow – tomorrow we will release a report that shows that investments into intangible assets is now growing nearly four times faster than investment into tangible assets, led by the United States and reaching nearly 15% of GDP last year.
Second, innovation is increasingly digital.
One-third of the over 3 million patents filed each year now relates to digital technologies like AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity, IoT and others, with investment pouring into software and data faster than any other intangible assets. The United States also leads in software spending, accounting for over half of global investment. But’s what’s interesting is that some of the fastest growth rates are coming from middle-income countries such as Argentina, Cameroon, India, Indonesia, Iran and Senegal.
Digital innovation is not just transforming industrial innovation, but also the creative economy. Technology, media, culture and content are merging in new and dynamic ways. Video games, now a $200 billion industry, is a prime example. Developers are using digital worlds to tell stories rooted in their own myths, legends and cultures, but transformed into games that attract global audiences. China’s Black Myth Wukong, Poland’s Witcher series, France’s Clair Obscur, and Saudi Arabia’s Bahamut show how digital innovation, creative expression and local heritage are blending in new ways.
Third, the engines of IP, innovation and creativity are increasingly global. Today, seven in ten IP filings originate from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. According to WIPO Pulse, our global survey of IP opinion, public attitudes toward IP are most positive in these regions as well. And in the creative economy, global music revenues rose fastest in the Middle East and North Arica, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America last year.
Countries of all sizes, and at all stages of development, now see innovation, creativity, and IP not as peripheral or technical concerns, but as central to their development, growth and prosperity. This year, we welcome more Ministers than ever to the WIPO Assemblies, many from developing countries, with this a testament to the increasing political interest from all countries to our work. And in my official visits abroad, it is becoming more common to meet heads of states who speak about IP not just as legal rights, but also as business and financial assets, and as a horizontal driver of jobs, investments, business growth and economic development.
Against this backdrop, WIPO’s work has also transformed. We have stepped up to make IP not just about registration and protection but also about commercialization and utilization. We have worked to bring IP to the grassroots, by bringing our programs to those innovating and creating on the ground, both in cities and in rural areas. We have put our energies into serving those underserved, like women, youth, SMEs, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, alongside our traditional stakeholders. And we have been laser focused on making sure that our work is concrete and impactful, giving visible results to communities and real persons, rather than just nice words on paper.
If a picture speaks a thousand words, I think a video can convey a million impressions. So I would like now to share with you a short video showing some of our work, all over the world, to bring IP into the lives of ordinary citizens.
Thanks to your support, we have been able to bring IP into these lives and to change lives in ways that allow them to meet their hopes and aspirations. Thank you for your partnership in helping to make our collective vision concrete.
In my following report to you on our work over the past year, I will do so following the four Pillars and Foundation of WIPO’s Medium Term Strategy Plan.
Pillar 1
Pillar 1 is about making IP understandable, relatable and visible – demystifying it, so it is not just for experts, but for everyone.
This joyful work continues to bring us into contact with inspiring innovators and creators around the world. One example we have just seen is Isabella Springmuhl – a fashion designer from Guatemala, and the first designer with Down’s syndrome to feature at London Fashion Week.
Visiting Guatemala, I met Isabella at her workshop, where she is blending traditional fabrics and handicraft with modern fashion. Her story was our most-watched video of the year.
Isabella’s story is one of a growing library of over 250 videos, designed for different social media channels and platforms. It is a massive shift from before, when our communications mainly focused on fellow IP experts.
As a result of this shift, we now have nearly 600,000 followers across social media, including Instagram and TikTok. These are our fastest growing platforms, and key to our engagement with youth.
This year’s World IP Day was another highlight. Themed around IP and Music, our campaign drew 30 million visits and 60,000 reactions and comments, with over 240 countries and territories celebrating IP and Music with us.
We plan on keeping the energy going through another theme that unites and excites us all.
In 2026, a year of the Winter Olympics in Italy, the World Cup in North America, and the first ever Youth Olympics in Africa – in Senegal – I am pleased to announce that next year’s theme for World IP Day will be on IP and Sports. We invite you to celebrate this with us.
Pillar 2
Pillar 2 is about WIPO’s role as the global forum for setting IP standards, discussing IP issues and shaping the future of IP.
2024 was a historic year, marked by the conclusion of two new treaties - the WIPO Treaty on IP, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge in May, and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty in November. I am particularly proud that these were achieved by consensus, which has become all too rare in these difficult times for multilateral negotiations.
We thank Member States for their spirit of constructiveness, collaboration and pragmatism that allowed this unprecedented achievement, which has sent a signal that while multilateral negotiations are difficult, crossing the finishing line together is not impossible here at WIPO.
But WIPO’s role goes beyond formal treaty negotiations. Much of our work also revolves around more informal dialogues and forums where we serve as a neutral, professional and inclusive convenor of different groups and communities.
These include discussions on specialized issues like IP Finance, Standard Essential Patents, and Patent Analytics. Other topics are more cross-cutting, like our IP and Women Symposium and WIPO WILD, our new global dialogue for ICT leaders from IP offices.
One topic that continues to dominate discussions is IP and AI. We are proud to be a truly global forum and that more than 14,000 participants from over 170 countries have joined the WIPO Conversation on IP and Frontier Technologies over the last 5 years.
To further our work in this area, we will launch a new initiative in December: the AI Infrastructure Interchange, or AIII. This will be a forum to exchange ideas and gather partners around digital identifiers and other metadata that are increasingly important to everyone in the creative economy as content becomes digital.
We're also proactively bringing the IP world together to engage with future in a more structured way. Last week, we released a Pathfinders report that looks at the Future of IP ten years out from now.
This is a critical exercise as IP offices are highly operational, with not much luxury of time to think too far ahead. I know this personally as someone who used to run a national IP office. And this is actually a very risky state of affairs in our fast-changing innovation landscape. We will help IP offices build foresight capabilities and create a global foresight community of practice to help us all think long-term and anticipate change more effectively.
With the shift in the geography of IP activity, we see more innovators, inventors, creators and entrepreneurs from developing countries join the ranks of those from developed countries. Demands from developing countries are therefore converging with those from developed countries.
One place where this has become evident is in IP enforcement. In recent weeks, I have spoken at enforcement events in Africa, Europe and Asia. The themes raised – from digital piracy to stamping out fakes – are common across all of these countries and regions, And the price of IP piracy – loss of jobs and lives in some cases, and the destructions of local creators and inventors, are raised wherever I go in the world.
WIPO remains fully committed to fighting piracy and counterfeiting. Last year, we launched a new digital campaign on sports piracy. It drew over 60 million views. We also trained nearly 1,500 law enforcement officials, prosecutors and judges worldwide.
Thousands of IP infringing websites were also added to WIPO Alert, our global platform identifying copyright-violating websites. And we're advancing two new tools: WIPO Alert Pay, which targets pirate site financing, and WIPO CRIS, a customs recordation system designed to boost IP enforcement at borders.
Looking ahead, we’ll launch a new dialogue on IP Protection in e-commerce later this year. And next year, we’ll establish a forum for IP Prosecutors - supporting a global community of practice for prosecutors of IP crime.
Partnerships underpin all this work, and how we deliver impact. We are deepening collaboration within the UN system, which is more important than ever within the context of UN reform and the UN 80 initiatives. This includes our trilateral work with WHO and WTO, collaborations with the ITC on women entrepreneurs and Indigenous Fashion and with the UNFCCC on the Green Technology Book.
Beyond the UN, we work with NGOs and like-minded partners and are pleased to have joined the Regionalized Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative to help build vaccine manufacturing capabilities in developing countries. We continue to be strong partners with international IP and innovation associations like AUTM, INTA, LESI, FICPI, and more, all here in the house today, to advance the IP agenda globally.
We are also establishing a presence in the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, to bring IP to the millions of visitors at the Expo. All these partnerships expand our reach and ability to deliver meaningful results on the ground as well as to scale our programs.
Pillar 3
Pillar 3 focuses on IP services and data – the engine room of global innovation.
Economic headwinds have been challenging for all IP offices and for WIPO, but we are happy to show that filings before the PCT, Madrid and Hague systems all grew last year – by 0.5%, 1.2% and 6.8% respectively. Use of WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center, also grew by 25%, with much of it driven by an increase in mediation.
WIPO is unique among UN agencies in providing these Global IP services to those in the private sector. With hundreds of IP disputes resolved and hundreds of thousands of IP filed through our registries by companies, professionals and individual inventors each year, we have built an ethos of customer service that echoes that of the national IP offices.
We are pleased that many of your companies, inventors and creators are already using our services, but we want to delight our customers even more. To drive this, we have established a Future Growth Taskforce to enhance customer service and better market our offerings. It’s allowing us to be more strategic and proactive in how we drive growth, while pursuing internal business reforms to make our registries more efficient and more user-friendly.
One example is the new eMadrid platform, which started not with an IT vision, but with deep consultations with nearly 1,000 customers from all over the world and at different levels of expertise, letting their needs drive system redesign.
With the growth in global IP filings, a big part of WIPO’s work is also in helping the IP offices of our Member States serve their customers. IP Offices all over the world are under tremendous pressure to digitalize, manage IT costs and reach out to their entire country, rather than just those in capitals.
This is why WIPO is now helping 94 IP Offices use our suite of IP office Business Solutions for free, with around a quarter moving to cloud-based services, including Botswana as the first IP office in Africa to move to the cloud using our free software
We’re also driving regional modernization. Through the ASEAN IP Register, we have helped unify 10 million IP records of the ASEAN Member States into a single, searchable database — a major leap from the old, fragmented system, which has been accessed millions of times. Building on this, we’re now exploring work with ARIPO in Africa on a similar platform.
Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
Sound information, data and insights are key to helping you as policy makers and leaders to understand how your innovation and creative ecosystems are doing, and what needs to be done to make it better.
Here, WIPO plays a unique and strategic role. Our Global Innovation Index, covering over 130 economies, is used extensively by policymakers, thought leaders and researchers in over 90 countries. Last year, our special theme was social entrepreneurship – which sparked new exciting partnerships with the Skoll Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Schwab Foundation.
Pillar 3 also includes our work to address global challenges like climate change and healthcare. Some are new, like the Medical Manufacturing Centre of Excellence. This supports local manufacturing through on-the-ground partnerships with stakeholders. Others are well established, like WIPO Green, our sustainable tech marketplace, home to more than 140,000 green technologies from over 140 countries, and that is delivering impactful projects in China, Tajikistan and across the Latin American region.
Pillar 4
Pillar 4 is about making IP a catalyst for growth and development for all countries.
WIPO’s work in this area has evolved in the past few years, guided by three core principles.
First, we look for impact, avoiding “tick box” developmental support that do not deliver concrete results on the ground. This is why, alongside the more traditional seminar/workshop format, we have pioneered a project approach where we mentor a handpicked group of beneficiaries, selected by you, over a 9-to-12-month period, helping them to incorporate IP into their life journey. Right now, we have delivered close to 90 projects that have transformed the lives of over 2000 beneficiaries.
Second, we don’t try to do everything ourselves but find partners who can help us to scale. This means that we actively look for local and community partners who can help us to bring our programs to their members and communities, and when we find these partners, we trust them to deliver our tools, programs and work on our behalf. One example is our work with the CII and FICCI in India, that has allowed us to reach out to thousands of companies in India’s huge SME sector.
Third, we don’t believe in giving things, but in building capabilities. This is what we mean when we say that WIPO’s support isn’t about giving handouts – and this is not what countries want anyway. Rather, this is about building skills, capabilities and confidence, so that what is imparted is sustained, and sustainable. One example is our work in Namibia to support women entrepreneurs, which has morphed from a WIPO one-off project into a Ministerial program led by Namibians for Namibians.
As a result of these 3 new ways of working, I am pleased to report that WIPO’s programs, projects and support have reached 400,000 youth, 300,000 women and 200,000 SMEs in the past four years, and in this same period the WIPO Academy has trained 620,000 persons from 190 countries – practically the whole world. We have become the world’s largest provider of IP skills, training and capabilities.
Let me share a few highlights
First, 50,000 SMEs in over 180 countries have used our IP Diagnostics Tool to understand how IP connects to their business and growth strategy, raising fundamental IP awareness among business leaders. We are proud the tool is available in nearly 30 languages.
We are also helping businesses make smarter, more strategic use of IP. SMEs in over 60 countries have benefited from IP Management Clinics, covering everything from AI and agribusiness to MedTech and fashion to design.
Partnerships with SME intermediary organizations are also growing. We now have 100 in operation. Last month, I signed a new agreement with INPI France and the body of African and Francophone Consular Chambers to reach more SMEs in Francophone Africa. This is exactly the kind of focused partnership that helps us to build IP knowledge and skills in very concrete ways in different parts of the world.
And we’re not stopping here. Our goal is to reach another 100,000 SMEs over the next two years. To help do that, we’re proposing a new initiative: the Global Entrepreneurship Empowerment Program, or GEEP. GEEP is a one-stop shop, aligned with every stage of the business journey – from understanding IP, protecting it, and using it for growth and commercialization. We see GEEP as a global blueprint for business success.
Secondly, nearly 5,000 women entrepreneurs benefited from our training and mentoring programs last year. Some efforts are national – like support for basket weavers in Djibouti or the Tally handicraft community in Egypt. Others span regions, like our branding and fashion initiative in the Arab world. We’re also building cross-regional connections, linking women from Africa and the Caribbean to share best practices, inspire one another and promote gender equality through IP.
Third, we’re empowering the next generation. Last year, we launched WIPO’s first-ever Youth Empowerment Strategy, IP YES! One priority is reaching youth early. That’s why we’re working to bring IP and innovation into primary and secondary schools, expanding our IP Summer Camps to Antigua and Barbuda, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Jordan.
But IP education must also lead to IP application. For instance, in Zambia and Tanzania, we’ve helped 100 youth commercialize their inventions. This has led to a dozen patents being granted. This is how we help the next generation not just to imagine the future but build it.
Fourth, we’re deepening support for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. One example comes from the Pasco region of Peru, a tea-producing area, where we’ve worked with 15 local Ashaninka communities to register a collective mark. Projects are also active in Australia for First Nations’ businesses in Bushfoods, and Guatemala, where we’ve begun a new project for 30 Indigenous women weavers.
We’re also increasing IP awareness among traditional medicine practitioners through a project in Botswana, that draws on a successful pilot in Ethiopia. And we’re deepening work for other marginalized groups – including entrepreneurs with intellectual disabilities in Mexico and migrant entrepreneurs in Spain. Thanks to our Accessible Books Consortium, 1.1 million accessible titles have reached people with print disabilities and visual impairments around the world.
Fifth, Member States are paying a lot more attention to IP commercialization, asking us for support to go beyond IP protection to ensuring that IP translates into jobs, investments, and economic outcomes
To support inventors and researchers, our global network of 1,600 Technology and Innovation Support Centers, active in over 90 countries, handled more than 2.2 million requests last year, helping to move research breakthroughs into commercial outcomes. Our next stage is to help them move up the value chain from providing information to being tech transfer offices, using a benchmark that we will soon be launching.
IP commercialization isn’t just about industrial innovation, it can also be about heritage products made by local communities and centered around traditional practices.
In countries like Cambodia, Chile, Ghana and Grenada, as well as Kazakhstan, Togo and Vanuatu, we are partnering extensively and intensively with local producers to secure GI or collective mark protection and then combine these more community-based IP with the right mix of trademarks, designs and copyright so that different types of IP come together to help these products to be branded, marketed, packaged and their stories told so that they can enter new markets.
Our efforts to push for IP to be seen as a financial asset and to move the needle on IP valuation, collateralization and financing is also making steady progress. We have completed a growing series of studies of practices in Member States and have begun to engage with the accounting, valuation and financial communities on this issue. We will need your help in this area, as my sense is that it is still very new to many of the financiers. We are looking for pilot projects with you to make this mainstream.
Sixth, our work for the creative economy and creators is growing, with strong demand coming from both developed and developing countries for WIPO to help grow the creative economy.
To support this, we’ve developed a new Creative Economy Model to bring more depth and consistency to how we measure the economic contribution of this part of the economy. We have already piloted this project in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Thailand and Trinidad and Tobago, and hope to reach over 10 countries by year-end.
We are also happy to report that WIPO Connect, our free software for the collective management of copyright and related rights, is now being used by 60 Collective Management Organizations, and more importantly, distributed over 30 million dollars in royalties to creators and performers in developing countries last year. Through WIPO Connect, ECCO, the Caribbean CMO, has just announced over a million dollars in royalties to musicians in places like Dominica, Saint Lucia and St Kitts & Nevis. Many of these musicians are benefitting from royalties for the first time.
This has also been a major year for CLIP or Creators Learn IP, our free, online platform raising creators' awareness of IP, now available in the 6 UN languages and Portuguese. We have just named our first group of CLIP Champions, including Solange Cesarovna from Cabo Verde, who are helping spread the word and extend our reach. We plan to expand the platform beyond music to the visual arts as well.
Finally, beyond programs that target individuals within Member States, our work is also at the national policy level.
We are currently helping over 65 countries with their National IP strategies, which are increasingly being updated or revised in order to align with the new vision of IP which many of you share. This is critical in positioning IP in an entirely different way and is one of the most powerful policy tools for governments to reform their IP system into an innovation ecosystem.
For Least Developed Countries, we have put together the LDC Graduation Support Package, which is our suite of services and support for LDCs who are on the pathway to Graduation. We are pleased these are already active in Angola, Laos and São Tomé and Príncipe – with new efforts underway in Bangladesh and Nepal. A further 40 LDCs have benefited from legislative advice, and we have developed a graduation toolkit in patent and technology law.
As well as a tool for development, we see IP as a bridge between countries and we always find opportunities to bring Member States together to learn.
Some highlights in this area include the first Heads of IP Office Conference for the 17 OAPI Member States in Yaoundé last year, and the latest Ministerial Meeting on IP for Central America and the Dominican Republic hosted by Guatemala. We're also stepping up support for Small Island Developing States and deepening opportunities for South-South and triangular north-south cooperation.
We want WIPO to be a bridge, and a connector, and this GA is yet another opportunity for us to do this, with so many networking events being organized.
Foundation
Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,
The foundation of all this work is WIPO’s financial and governance strength. Results-based management, strategic planning, robust internal controls, effective governance – these are not mere administrative functions, they are part of the very lifeblood of our organization, essential organs that keep WIPO fit, healthy and ready to serve.
In this regard, I am pleased to report another year of healthy finances. Revenues in 2024 reached 496.7 million CHF, investment gains totaled 73.7 million CHF and we closed the year with a surplus of 140 million CHF. We run a tight ship so that we can serve you without burdening you with substantial contributions.
But strong organizations are not built on financials alone. Culture and people are equally, if not even more critical. That’s why we are deepening efforts to align our talent and human resources with our strategic goals. We’ve accelerated the implementation of our action plan for geographical diversity, launching pilot projects in Botswana, Estonia and Paraguay. I can also share that 60% of colleagues joining us last year were women. We will continue to put our efforts in building a more diverse, open, vibrant, collaborative and results driven work culture.
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Dear Colleagues, Friends,
In concluding, let me go back to where I started, which is our mission of safeguarding and promoting the human spirit of innovation and creativity, and of supporting the world’s innovators and creators.
With your support, we have undertaken, together, a journey of transformation at WIPO and also of the global IP ecosystem to make IP relevant, concrete and visible for all – ensuring that IP is not just for the few, but for the many.
We can be proud that we as the global IP community have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, but there are many more who need our help and support to bring their ideas to the market and make their aspirations come alive.
My team and I pledge our full support to you as we continue this journey of transformation together, so that our vision of innovation and creativity working for everyone, everywhere comes alive in the years to come.
Thank you very much for your warm support and I wish you all the best for a successful assemblies ahead.
Thank you.