WIPO Report To Annual Assemblies Contains Some Interesting Facts

Among all the high-profile issues on the stage and the countless side meetings and cultural celebrations happening at the annual World Intellectual Property Organization annual Assemblies, there were some interesting facts and figures presented about the UN agency itself.

The WIPO General Assemblies took place from 2-11 October. During the Assemblies, the Report of the Director General to the 2017 WIPO Assemblies was presented to the member states, who took note of it.

The report, which mainly offers statistics from 2016, covers a lot of ground, and not very deeply, but offers enough highlights to stir interest and get a reasonable picture of WIPO’s progress on various fronts over the last year.

Finances and Construction

For instance, it opened with the ever-rosy picture of the “robust” financial situation, in which WIPO claimed a budget surplus of Chf 32 million Swiss francs in 2016 (the first year of the 2016-2017 biennium). Total revenue was Chf 387.7 million, and total expenditures Chf 355.7 million, of which personnel accounted for 63.1 percent.

WIPO holds considerable surplus funds, and the 2016 surplus allowed the reserves to be raised from 22 percent to 25 percent of biennial expenditure.

Further good news is that nine months in to 2017, the year appeared to be tracking similarly to 2016, the report said.

WIPO is notable among UN agencies for being almost entirely self-funding for the services it provides. Contributions to the 2016 total revenue were dominated by the Patent Cooperation Treaty, followed by the Madrid System for trademarks, and the Hague System for industrial design. Governments (assessed contributions) accounted for less than 5 percent of the total:

PCT System                            75%

Madrid System                        15.4%

Hague System                         1.3%

Assessed contributions           4.4%

Voluntary contributions          2.6%

Other income                          1.3%

A small note among the expenditures of WIPO in 2016 was that the cost of travel, training and grants dropped by about 9 percent, from Chf 17,304 in 2015 to Chf 15,810.

For the 2018/2019 biennium, the Assemblies were asked to approve approximately Chf 25 million in the Capital Master Plan for several construction and upkeep projects. These included:

Global IP Platform

– indirectly benefits the fee-funded Unions

– cost allocated as indirect Union expenditure to the fee-funded Unions (capacity to pay principle)

Resilient and Secure Platform for the PCT

– directly benefits the PCT Union

– cost allocated as direct Union expenditure to the PCT Union WO/PBC/27/9 page 9

Madrid IT Platform

– directly benefits the Madrid Union

– cost allocated as direct Union expenditure to the Madrid Union

Conference Registration System

– indirectly benefits all Unions

– cost allocated as indirect admin expenditure to all Unions (capacity to pay principle)

Building and Security and Safety-related projects

– indirectly benefits all Unions

– cost allocated as indirect admin expenditure to all Unions (capacity to pay principle)

WIPO noted in a Program and Budget Committee document WO/PBC/27/9 [pdf]:

“the IT projects … would primarily benefit the PCT and Madrid Systems. A significant portion of the building-related projects would benefit the PCT system. As the Hague and Lisbon reserve balances were in deficit at the end of 2016, the remaining costs are allocated to the Contribution-financed (CF), the PCT and the Madrid Unions.

It adds: “The positive balance of reserves for these Unions in excess of the 2018/19 target illustrates that the Unions are not being negatively affected by the proposed CMP projects for 2018/19.”

Other capital projects include upgrades to various buildings including the PCT Building, and the creation of a multi-media studio for Chf 1.7 million.

In another budget area, the report shows a general rise in “Funds-in-Trust”, which are earmarked funds provided by governments. Countries giving included: Australia (which cut its funds by more than half from Chf 1.3 million to Chf 553,000 in 2017), South Korea (from Chf 1.507 million to Chf 1.515 million), Japan (which stayed the same at Chf 5.899 million), China (down from Chf 328,000 to Chf 300,000), France (up from Chf 289,000 to Chf 300,000), Spain (up from Chf 165,000 to Chf 170,000), and the Ibero-American Program for Industrial Property (Chf 57,000 to Chf 60,000). According to the report, Mexico, Portugal, the United States (USPTO Creative Industries), and the UN Office for Partnerships all dropped their funding of Funds-in-Trust in 2017 to zero.

Global IP Systems

The director general’s report describes increases in activity across its many IP systems, dominated by the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which is used by patent-holders everywhere to simplify filing and expand their protection internationally.

“The PCT System continues to go from strength to strength,” WIPO reported. In its first year, starting in 1978, it had 459 applications filed. In 2016, the number was 233,000 applications filed (by some 50,838 different applicants), which was a 7.3 percent increase over the previous year. It has gone up every year of its existence except 2009, during the global financial crisis.

For receiving PCT application, the United States is the longstanding leader and again topped the list with 56,679, but this was actually a decline of 1.6 percent over the previous year.

The US was followed by Japan (44,513, a 3.3 percent increase), and China right behind at 44,473, a remarkable 48.3 percent increase. Then came the European Patent Office at 35,309 applications (3.4 percent increase), and Korea at 15,601 (6.9 percent increase).

With Jordan’s accession this year, there are now 152 members of the PCT.

Another fact is that the PCT loses income due to exchange rate fluctuations when fees are transferred in different currencies, so later this year, WIPO is hoping to pilot a “netting” software that could allow transactions in a single currency between the WIPO International Bureau and an office to offset one another.

The PCT has seen a surge in applications from the Asian region, more than doubling since 2010, and WIPO is having to make adjustments to handle the load, including with translators.

The Madrid System now covers 115 countries worldwide, and international applications rose in 2016 by 7.2 percent to 52,550, the highest ever in a year. But growth is predicted to “much more modest” in 2017, the report said.

The most filings continued to come from the United States, with Germany close behind. Next but well below on the list are France, China, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and the Netherlands. China’s growth was even more remarkable here, at 68.6 percent in 2016. Russia grew by 32.7 percent.

But the top designated countries for Madrid were China, European Union, United States (all three close together), followed by Russia, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, Korea, India and Mexico.

On the Hague System, there are now 53 contracting parties, and an “active pipeline of countries where concrete steps for joining the Hague System are being made,” the report said, including some very large economies: Canada, China, Israel, Mexico, Russia, and the UK.

International applications rose by 35.3 percent over one year, while international registrations rose 46.1 percent. This reflects in part the accessions of Korea (2014), Japan (2015) and the US (2015). The increase in 2017 is not expected to be as great as 2016, it said.

One interesting fact is that the newer members of the Hague System “practice substantive examination of design applications,” leading to a tenfold increase in the number of notified refusals by the International Bureau (from 203 to 2,021), the report said.

There will be a new “electronic environment” deployed in late 2018, making it more user-friendly and efficient. Progress continues to be made to reach a single global system and eliminate complications from application of different Acts of the Hague Agreement, the report said.

Arbitration and Mediation: Domain Names

WIPO has made a side business of providing alternative dispute resolution to court litigation of IP disputes, especially for internet domains.

In 2016, the total number of WIPO cybersquatting cases rose 10 percent, with a record 3,036 cases brought by trademark owners, involving 109 countries. The top three sectors for complaints were finance (12 percent), fashion (9 percent), and heavy industry and machinery (9 percent). Panellists were quite diverse: 305 panellists from 47 countries, with 15 different languages.

Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), like .uk for the United Kingdom or .ch for Switzerland, made up 14 percent of all WIPO filings. The .eu and .se ccTLDs were added in 2017, bringing the total to 76 such registries using the WIPO service.

The wealth of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that were launched in recent years “now figure regularly” in Uniform Dispute Resolution (UDRP) cases, the report said. Some 1,200 of the expected 1,400 new gTLDs now operational, these domains made up some 16 percent of the 2016 cases at WIPO.

The reports notes that the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center saw a “considerable increase” in cases in 2016. WIPO was cited as the second-most used institution by parties in disputes, according to a 2016 survey conducted by Queen Mary University of London. The first was the International Court of Arbitration.

In other issues, WIPO continued to see dozens of accessions to WIPO-administered treaties over the year, with the majority from developing countries. In September, WIPO announced two new member states, the Marshall Islands and Timor Leste, bringing the total WIPO membership to 191.

And on a different note, since the Marrakesh Treaty entry into force, a distance-learning course was launched in the six official UN languages. Notably, since mid-2016, some 900 people have registered for the course, and plans are being made for expansion.

And another highlight of the year as noted in the report was the Global Innovation Index, which WIPO co-publishes with INSEAD and Cornell University. A new feature in 2017 was the development of a new ranking of the top 100 innovation hotspots around the world.

 

Image Credits: WIPO Flickr