Ambassador Carlos Sorreta, Chair of the WIPO General Assemblies,
Excellencies, Ministers,
Heads of IP Offices, Heads of Delegations,
Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Sixty-Eighth Series of Meetings of the Assemblies of the WIPO Member States.
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Dear Colleagues,
Each year, we meet at these Assemblies as the global IP community to take stock of the year that has passed, and to look ahead.
Post-covid, it has become almost of a trite statement that we are observing big changes in the global political, economic, cultural and technological landscape. But I can’t help but reflect that the changes have seemed particularly dramatic this past year.
Politically, conflict and division have increased. Economically, uncertainty remains high, with uneven economic growth. Culture is increasingly globalized but at the same time it has become a flashpoint within countries. And technologically, the rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping the way we create and innovate in fundamental ways.
In these uncertain times, the path ahead is naturally unclear.
But I think it is also an opportunity to reflect, go back to fundamentals and use that to have clarity on the way ahead.
So allow me to share some reflections.
Long before there were IP offices, patent or trademark registries – indeed before civilization – human beings were already inventing, innovating and creating. Just think about stone tools, arrows, cave paintings, bone sculptures and shell necklaces – our curiosity, inventiveness and creativity allowed us to fundamentally reshape our world, eventually leading to agriculture, cities and civilization.
We have been a species of innovators and creators since time immemorial – but over 500 years ago, a revolution in how we innovate started in Venice, spread to Europe, before becoming global. That revolution was intellectual property.
IP turbocharged innovation, allowing the inventor or creator to connect his or her idea and expression directly with economy and society, instead of having to seek permission or patronage from Lords or Kings. It gave economic value to an invention by endowing it with proprietary rights that could be enforced and monetized. And it supported the spread of knowledge by creating public registers open for others to inspect and learn about the latest inventions. IP helped create our modern world of technology, innovation, science, design, culture and the arts.
If we understand IP from this angle, then it is natural that we see our work as the global IP community as not just administering the registration of IP rights but also building a world that supports our innovators and creators, and keeps the human spirit of innovation and creativity alive.
Winning together through IP
IP is not just connected to a deep human instinct, but also has a unique property. Unlike tangible and fixed property, it allows for the potentially limitless scaling up and sharing of value. Just think about how a single brand can be franchised across countries, a technology can be licensed to benefit of many, or how content – like World Cup matches – can stream to billions at the same time. IP makes this possible.
Because of this quality of IP, we must avoid the temptation to turn inwards in these difficult times and view IP through a zero-sum lens. Instead, we should recognize that collaboration and cooperation are fundamental to the IP world. This is why WIPO believes that this can be a place where Member States win together, even in a world where there is increasing skepticism towards multilateralism and multilateral institutions.
In fact, our data and engagement shows a growing convergence in how the world views and uses IP as IP moves from the periphery to the center.
Last year, investments in intangible assets passed 10 trillion US dollars for the first time, growing more than three times faster than investments in tangible assets. Even more striking is how broadly this momentum is being shared. Alongside established innovation leaders like the United States, Japan and Germany, emerging economies including India, the Philippines and Brazil are seeing strong and consistent growth in intangible investment.
More broadly, trade in IP crossed 1.2 trillion dollars last year, more than doubling since 2010, with the United States, China and Japan leading but also with Mexico and Türkiye amongst the biggest IP traders.
Trade in global cultural goods is at a record 250 billion US dollars, with global culture increasingly shaped by Afrobeats, Latin pop and K-pop, as well as movies and animation from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
So in a world where immense opportunity is being offered to us through the power of IP to harness innovation and creativity, where IP can help to share and scale value, and where more and more countries are embracing IP as a path to prosperity, growth and development, WIPO can be a place where we win together.
The Transformation Journey
Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,
As this is my last address to you during my first term as DG, I cannot help but glance briefly in the rear-view mirror to where this journey began, even as I look forward to the next 6 years with you.
When I stepped behind my desk for the first time as DG WIPO on 1st October 2020, it was in a world that had been turned upside down. The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted not just economies, but the way we lived and worked. It suspended in person interactions, putting us behind masks and computer screens. It tested trust in institutions. Innovation and IP were thrust into the center of difficult debates.
I had campaigned on two promises.
First, that while WIPO and IP had strong foundations, we needed to show that intellectual property is not legal and technical but also a powerful catalyst for innovation, creativity, investments, jobs, business growth and ultimately, economic, social and cultural development.
And second, that WIPO and I would be a bridge between East and West, North and South.
But in the middle of the Covid crisis, I felt that the transformation of IP needed to become even more impactful and change even faster, and in the alienation of the pandemic, the world needed bridges more than ever.
I am proud that in the past 6 years, we have all worked hard each day – all of you, together with this team here – to make this vision reality.
Together we have made IP more understandable, more accessible and more relevant. We have broadened the conversation beyond the IP community itself, connecting IP to innovation, creativity, economy, finance, trade, culture, technology and entrepreneurship, not just at the top but also at the grassroots.
More people than before are engaging with WIPO through our social media and digital platforms. This year’s World IP Day celebrations around “IP and Sports” reached a record global audience of 85 million, demonstrating that when we connect IP to issues people can relate to, we can get everyone excited about IP.
I am, therefore, pleased to announce that the theme for next year’s world IP day will be IP and Fashion, another area that is connected to every type of IP.
At the same time, WIPO has strengthened its role as the place where the future of IP is being shaped. Together, we demonstrated that multilateralism can deliver results despite challenges, through the successful landmark conclusion of two treaties in 2024, the WIPO Treaty on IP, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty.
But this work is not just about formal negotiations. Increasingly, WIPO is where governments, judges, businesses, innovators, creators, experts, academia and civil society come together to explore emerging issues - from use of IT in IP offices to IP finance, patent analytics and, increasingly, the opportunities and challenges presented by AI. In a rapidly changing world, our responsibility cannot be to passively respond to change, but to proactively shape the future.
We have also continued to strengthen our engine room – the global IP registries of PCT, Madrid, the Hague and Lisbon. Nearly two million patents, trademarks and designs have been internationally protected through WIPO’s registries in the past six years, while we have continued to modernize our Global IP Services to make them faster, easier to use and much more customer centered. Our dispute resolution services through the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center continue to reach record levels and we have expanded support for IP enforcement through legislation, capacity-building, anti-piracy platforms like WIPO Alert and WIPO Alert Pay and improved customs recordation.
We have also strongly supported the digitalization of IP institutions. More than 90 IP offices use our IPAS platform to modernize their operations and collective management organizations in almost 60 countries benefit from WIPO Connect. We are also stepping up practical initiatives like the Global IP Assignment Platform, which seeks to reduce friction and complexity for the transfer and assignment of IP.
At the same time, more and more governments are making deeper use of our data and analysis, including the Global Innovation Index, to coordinate policy and strengthen innovation and creative ecosystems. And through the continued development of platforms like WIPO GREEN, we demonstrate how IP contributes to solving common global challenges.
All this work centers around policies and institutions, but one of the most important changes in the way we have been working is to bring the benefits of IP in a tangible and visible way to those on the ground. Impact and inclusivity has been our focus.
Around the world, we are supporting women, youth, small and medium-sized enterprises, those from rural areas, indigenous peoples and local communities to use IP to meet their varied aspirations.
Initiatives such as IP GAP, our first gender action plan, IP YES!, our first youth empowerment strategy, and CLIP – Creators Learn IP -- reflect this determination to ensure that the benefits of IP reach more people on the ground than ever before.
The results speak for themselves.
Since 2020, the WIPO Academy has trained over 800,000 people, and 1.3 million together with the IP Training institutes. More than 100,000 small and medium enterprises have used our IP Diagnostics Tool, including 60,000 in the past year alone.
Our network of 1,800 Technology and Innovation Support Centers responded to more than 2.5 million requests last year in close to 100 countries. And we have crossed 25,000 beneficiaries from our tailored IP projects around the world, projects that last 6-12 months, not just in developing regions but also in developed countries.
The foundation is of course the strong financial and performance management of WIPO. We have paid close attention to this and maintained a strong financial position, closing the biennium with an operating result of CHF 144.1 million and an overall surplus of CHF 224.5 million. Our reserves have grown to allow us to invest in technology, infrastructure and our resources to serve you well without burdening you with more contributions. And we have achieved this while also modernizing our operations, investing in our people and building an organization that is more agile, more efficient and better prepared for the future.
But behind all of these statistics and reporting are real people whose lives been transformed, and I want to tell the story of just one of those 1.3 million lives that we have touched in the past 6 years, and this is the story of Peserverance Muzeya, a woman entrepreneur from Zimbabwe.
When Peserverance travelled to Rwanda in 2023 to attend a WIPO Agribusiness Summit, she brought with her an exceptional business, built through determination, ingenuity and years of hard work. Yet despite the quality of her products, her company, Alzanael Group, had no distinctive brand, no IP protection and little presence in international markets.
Through our IP Mentorship Program, we helped Peserverance develop a distinctive brand, redesign packaging and secure trademark protection.
The results were transformational. Peserverance secured a major international innovation grant, increased sales by 50 per cent, expanded trademark protection across Africa and built an online presence. Last year, she secured a 20 million dollar joint venture with an international company, something possible because her business had also become a recognizable and investable brand.
But perhaps the most important part of this story is what came next. Having experienced the value of IP herself, Peserverance is now mentoring other entrepreneurs, helping them build businesses of their own. Her story reminds us that IP does more than protect ideas, it unlocks opportunity, it creates value and it changes lives.
Looking Ahead
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Over the past six years, we have built strong foundations and begun the transformation of WIPO and what IP means. You have repeatedly affirmed that transformation, and indeed we will continue that journey together.
That said, many of you are curious as to what are my aspirations are for the next six years, so let me take this chance to share 4 dreams that I have.
My first dream is that IP becomes truly mainstream: no longer seen as technical, distant or relevant only to specialists, but something that is recognized everywhere as one of the most important tools for supporting entrepreneurs, creators, researchers, businesses and communities. When someone talks about technology, brands, designs, arts, culture, agriculture, trade or the economy, they should know that IP is critically important in all of these areas. We have moved some way in this direction but there is much more to do.
First, we will need to continue upgrading and strengthening our engine room – the Global IP Services, harnessing the best of AI and other digital technologies without losing the human touch. We will also continue to cover the whole IP life-cycle from protection and registration and dispute resolution, to commercialization, monetization and financing. We want good ideas to get strong protection by becoming a registered IP, but we also want these registered IP to journey to the market where their legal potential becomes economic value.
Second, we will need to scale up our impact. We must build on what we have learned over the past six years and move from ad hoc projects to scalable programs. Our reach must increase from hundreds of thousands to millions. But we cannot achieve this alone. Scaling impact will depend strongly on partnerships, and this is where your support will be extremely important.
Third, we will need to support policy makers to see IP not just as legal scaffolding but as integral to the future of their countries, companies and societies through data and insights and the building of innovation and creative ecosystems that contribute to growth and addressing the global challenges that we face.
My second dream is to build one global IP movement: where developed and developing countries, where emerging economies and LDCs alike are creators, users and beneficiaries of the international IP system; where innovation is not concentrated in just a few places, but flourishes in every region of the world; and where every country has the opportunity to contribute to, and benefit from, the global IP, innovation and creative economy.
Realizing this vision will require us to bridge differences and divergences, build trust and continue finding areas of consensus and convergence that move the IP agenda forward. But it also requires us to build a more inclusive IP ecosystem: one in which women, youth, small businesses, indigenous peoples, local communities and others are able to participate fully and share in the opportunities that innovation and creativity create.
My third dream is to ensure that the global IP ecosystem is future ready and fit for the innovator, creator and enterprises of tomorrow and not that of yesterday.
To do this, we will continue modernizing the global IP ecosystem, ensuring that our treaties, services, data platforms and digital tools evolve at the speed of innovation itself -- anticipating change rather than reacting to it, and delivering services that are faster, smarter and more accessible for everyone.
But modernization is not just about tools but also ecosystem and architecture. We need to be future ready, so that IP remains not just relevant, but vibrant, during the age of AI and where the way we innovate is increasingly a combination of industrial, digital and cultural innovation.
We will step up our work on IP and AI and organize it like the four wheels of a car.
First, we will give Member States a forum to discuss IP and AI issues holistically and strategically through the new Global Forum on IP and AI, which will be held from 9 – 10 November this year. We welcome Ministers and senior policy makers to join us on this occasion.
Second, in April this year, we launched the AI Infrastructure Interchange or AIII, to give experts from across a broad range of sectors a neutral and safe place to discuss technical IP infrastructure issues such as digital identifiers, metadata and watermarking, amongst others. The insights from these experts will be reported to the Member States regularly, and feed into your discussions.
Third, WIPO is already developing AI tools that will be offered to Member States for use. This will start with trademark examination and move on to other areas, and we intend to pilot this with a few countries by the middle of next year, before developing and deploying it on a much broader scale. We welcome other IP offices to join us in co-creating and sharing the tools that you are developing, so that we lessen duplication and enhance cooperation.
Fourth, we will continue providing technical advice, legislative assistance and other capacity building efforts, including the training of AI entrepreneurs to use these powerful technologies for the good of others. One exciting project in this regard is our collaboration with other UN Agencies to train AI entrepreneurs in Africa to address healthcare issues.
My last dream is to continue building WIPO itself into an organization worthy of the confidence that Member States place in us, also as part of the UN 80 process: we want to be financially responsible, digitally savvy, operationally excellent and trusted around the world for our professionalism and integrity.
And in a world where multilateral institutions face increasing skepticism, I hope that WIPO can demonstrate that UN agencies in the 21st century are digital, efficient, proactive and vibrant, and most importantly, deliver tangible, concrete impact on the ground.
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Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
These dreams stream from the two convictions I shared earlier – that the role of IP is fundamentally connected with the human spirit of innovation and creativity and that IP is a way for us to collaborate and cooperate.
This work does not exist in a vacuum, and a vision has to engage with the hustle and bustle of the real world. But, to paraphrase President Kennedy, we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. And in that endeavor, we can draw confidence from those that we serve, and from the remarkable history of the global IP system itself.
Time and again, the world has been transformed politically, economically, culturally and technologically. Yet the IP system has not only endured, it has evolved, adapted and grown stronger because it has remained faithful to its essential purpose of serving the human innovator and creator.
We will remain true to this purpose and together we will continue building a world where IP is for everyone, everywhere.
Thank you.