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WIPO Magazine, Issue 6/2019 (December)
The WIPO Magazine explores intellectual property, creativity and innovation in action across the world.
Publication year: 2019
WIPO Program and Budget
for the 2020/21 biennium
The Program and Budget is a defining document for the Organization. It establishes the results that Member States wish to see achieved by the Organization over the coming biennium and authorizes the programs and resources necessary for the realization for those results.
WIPO Re:Search: Advancing Product Development for Neglected Infectious Diseases through Global Public-Private Partnerships
WIPO Re:Search Consortium unites public and private market forces to address neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), malaria, and tuberculosis (TB) through sharing of intellectual property across sectors and geographies. To date, WIPO Re:Search has catalyzed over 150 R&D collaborations and managed capacity-building fellowships for scientists across sub-Saharan Africa and other low- and middle-income regions. This publication highlights seven exciting collaborations that are advancing solutions to help over one billion people who suffer from NTDs, malaria, and TB.
WIPO Re:Search Partnership Stories 2016-2019: Driving R&D for Neglected Infectious Diseases Through Global Cross-Sector Collaborations
WIPO Re:Search is a global public-private consortium that accelerates drug, vaccine, and diagnostic research and development (R&D) to address unmet medical needs for neglected infectious diseases and drive progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Established in 2011, WIPO Re:Search catalyzes royalty-free sharing of intellectual property—including compounds, data, clinical samples, technology, and expertise—among Consortium Members in targeted, mutually beneficial R&D collaborations. This publication contain stories of collaborations established through WIPO Re:Search from 2016 to 2019.
WIPO Collection of Leading Judgments on Intellectual Property Rights
People's Republic of China (2011–2018)
This casebook of judgments by the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China is the first volume in the WIPO Collection of Leading Judgments on Intellectual Property Rights. The WIPO Collection gives the global intellectual property community access to landmark judgments from some of the most dynamic litigation jurisdictions of the world, through a succession of volumes that illustrate intellectual property adjudication approaches and trends by jurisdiction or by theme.
Measuring Innovation in the Autonomous Vehicle Technology
Economic Research Working Paper No. 60
Automotive industry is going through a technological shock. Multiple intertwined technological advances (autonomous vehicle, connect vehicles and mobility-as-a-Service) are creating new rules for an industry that had not changed its way of doing business for almost a century. Key players from the tech and traditional automobile sectors – although with different incentives – are pooling resources to realize the goal of self-driving cars. AV innovation by auto and tech companies' innovation is still largely home based, however, there is some shifting geography at the margin. AV and other related technologies are broadening the automotive innovation landscape, with several IT-focused hotspots – which traditionally were not at the center of automotive innovation – gaining prominence.
Global Roots of Innovation in Plant Biotechnology
Economic Research Working Paper No. 59
Innovation in agricultural biotechnology has the potential to increase agricultural productivity and quality, ultimately raising incomes for farmers across the world. Advances in the field have produced crops that are resistant to certain diseases, that result in higher yield than before, that can grow in extreme soil conditions, such as in arid and salty environments and even those that are infused with nutrients. Moreover, the technology has been hailed as a potential solution to addressing global issues of hunger and poverty. It therefore follows that innovation in this field finds strong support from the public sector as well as the private sector. This paper traces the evolution of the global innovation landscape of plant biotechnology over the past couple of decades. Drawing on information contained in patent documents and scientific publications, it identifies the sources of innovation in the field, where they are located and demonstrates how these innovative centers connect to one another. There are three important findings. First, the global innovation network of agricultural biotechnology showcases a prime example of how innovation activities spread to many parts of the world. Second, while there are more countries participating in the innovation network, most of these innovation centers are concentrated in the urban areas and away from the rural where most of the transgenic crops are harvested. Third, the increasing need for collaboration between the private and public sectors to bring the invention to the market may have effect on how the returns to innovation are appropriated.
Tied In: The Global Network of Local Innovation
Economic Research Working Paper No. 58
In this paper we exploit a unique and rich dataset of patent applications and scientific publications in order to answer several questions concerned with two current phenomena on the way knowledge is produced and shared worldwide: its geographical spread at the international level and its spatial concentration in few worldwide geographical hotspots. We find that the production of patents and scientific publications has spread geographically to several countries, and has not kept within the traditional knowledge producing economies (Western Europe, Japan and the U.S.). We observe that part of this partial geographical spread of knowledge activities is due to the setting up of Global Innovation Networks, first toward more traditional innovative countries, and then towards emerging economies too. Yet, despite the increasing worldwide spread of knowledge production, we do not see the same spreading process within countries, and even we see some increased concentration in some of them. This may have, of course, important distributional consequences within countries. Moreover, these selected areas also concentrate a large and increasing connectivity, within their own country to other hotspots, and across countries through Global Innovation Networks.
The Geography of Innovation: Local Hotspots and Global Innovation Networks
Economic Research Working Paper No. 57
Through successive industrial revolutions, the geography of innovation around the globe has changed radically, and with it the geography of wealth creation and prosperity. Since the Third Industrial Revolution, high incomes are increasingly metropolitan, leading to a renewal of inter-regional divergence within countries. These metropolitan areas are also hotbeds of innovation. At the same time, global networks for the production and delivery of goods and services have expanded greatly in recent decades. The globalization of production is mirrored in the globalization of innovation. This paper argues that the emerging geography of innovation can be characterised as a globalized hub-to-hub system, rather than a geography of overall spread of innovation. Although much attention has been given to explaining the rise and growth of innovation clusters, there is as yet no unified framework for the micro-foundations of the agglomeration and dispersion of innovation. In addition, there appear to be strong links between growing geographical inequality of innovation and prosperity, particularly within countries. This is particularly relevant in the context of declining overall research productivity, which could be driving growing geographical concentration. All in all, there is a rich agenda for continuing to investigate the relationship between the geography of innovation, economic development and income distribution.