. /.   WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/MIN(09)/13 
1 December 2009 
 (09-6112) 
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE 
Seventh Session Geneva, 30 November - 2 December 2009 Original:   English 
 
  
TOWARDS A WORLD OF MULTI-POLAR INNOVATION 
 
Francis Gurry
 
Director-General  
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO ) 
   I should like to thank the World Trade Organization for inviting the World Intellectual 
Property Organization (WIPO) to participate in th is Opening Ceremony of its Seventh Ministerial 
Conference.  I welcome the opportunity to underlin e the importance of the common area of policy - 
intellectual property - that our two Organizations sh are, as well as the importance of the cooperation 
between our two Organizations in relation to that shared area of responsibility. 
  It is now 15 years since the WTO joined WIPO in the field of intellectual property with the 
agreement that has become a household word, at le ast in diplomatic and trade households, TRIPS.  
Much has happened in those 15 years to change th e landscape in which intellectual property acts.  
Production and trade patterns across the world have sh ifted;  the value of the conceptual input to 
production has increased, as evidenced by the rising share of intangib les in market capitalization and 
by the investment of over $1 trillion worldwide e ach year in research and development (R&D);  
commercial activity was permitted for the first time  on the Internet in 1995;  the human genome was 
deciphered;  the media of cultural expressions have  converged;  and the mobile telephone, with an 
estimated 4.6 billion subscriptions worldwide, h as transformed both social communication and ways 
of doing business.  These and other developments ha ve ushered in the promise of a new world of 
innovation, one that is perhaps b est described as a multi-polar one. 
 
 A new map is being drawn for the world of i nnovation.  In 1994, when the TRIPS Agreement 
was concluded, North East Asia - Japan, Republic of Korea and China - produced 7.6 per cent of 
international patent applications.
1  Last year, they accounted for 26.2 per cent of all international 
patent applications.  Each of their offices features in the top five patent offices in the world in terms of volume of applications.  Asia, more generally, no w accounts for 45 per cent of first-degree science, 
technology and engineering graduates in the world.
2  The software industry in India has grown from 
$1.2 billion in 1995 to an estimated $60 billion this year.3  The examples can be multiplied. 
  Geography, however, is not the only way in which multi-polarity has been expressed in innovation.  It is also apparent in new approaches to the process of innovation.  In the 20
th century, 
enterprises satisfied their innovation needs largely through their own in-house R&D programmes.  In 
the 21st century, more and more enterprises are seeking to answer their innovation needs also through 
                                                      
1 Filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT ), administered by WIPO.  In 2008, some 
160,000 international patent applications were filed under PCT. 
2 In 2006.  See National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 , Ch. 2. 
3 National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), The IT-BPO Sector in 
India.  Strategic Review 2009 . WT/MIN(09)/13 
Page 2  
 
  collaboration with other enterprises and institutions.  This new tendency, broadly described as "open 
innovation", has been driven both by the complexity  of technology, which typically requires multiple 
technical sources for a single product, and by ne twork technologies, which provide platforms for 
multiple actors located in geographically separate lo cations to participate in a common project, such 
as those associated with open source software. 
 
 These developments in the world of innovation have important consequences for international 
organizations.  For a start, the speed with whic h they have transformed the landscape of innovation 
must give cause for all of us to wonder about the slowness of the multilateral process.  Will the multilateral process be able to respond in a timely manner to the world of multi-polar innovation? 
 
 The developments have also underlined that, in  the new world, technical infrastructure can be 
every bit as important as legal architecture - platforms can be as important as treaties as vehicles for international cooperation.  One only has to think of  You Tube and Twitter and to imagine if similar 
behavioural transformations could have been achieve d with a treaty.  Infrastructure in this area can 
take many forms.  It may consist of global public ass ets, such as the aRDi database for scientific and 
technical journals that WIPO has, in cooperation w ith the International Publishers Association, made 
available for the least developed countries and developing countries;  a database for technology 
disclosed through the patent system, such as WI PO's PATENTSCOPE® database;  platforms for 
adding value to such disclosures or connecting inter ested parties in relation to the disclosures;  or 
platforms between actors in a given policy area,  such as the Stakeholders Platform that 
WIPO facilitates between publishers and the Wo rld Blind Union to improve access to published 
works on the part of the visually impaired.   In the networked world, platforms are vital means of spreading the benefit of innovation, 
increasing participation in open inno vation and improving the efficiency of technology markets.  They 
can assist in helping to ensure that the new world of innovation is multi-polar  not only in production, 
but also in access.  They can be primary ve hicles for achieving balance between incentivizing 
knowledge generation, on the one  hand, and ensuring knowledge transfer, on the other hand. 
  As this Ministerial Conference opens, the world is facing two over-riding challenges - the 
challenge of finding the path to economic growth and the challenge of climate change.  Innovation 
lies at the heart of the solution to both of these ch allenges.  Its role as the residual source of economic 
growth has long been recognized and has been emphasi zed in many stimulus packages.  Its function in 
meeting the challenge of climate ch ange is to provide the technolog ical and organizational means for 
effecting the transformation of our carbon-based economy to a carbon-neutral or carbon-free economy. 
 
 Innovation is the space between problem and solu tion or, in the words of an eminent Indian 
scientist
4, the space between mind and market.  An effec tive and balanced intellectual property system 
plays a vital role in that space.  WIPO is committed to such an effective and balanced system and to 
assisting countries in developing their innovation strategies.  
 I thank you once again for the opportunity of speaking to you this afternoon and I wish you a 
very successful and innovative Ministerial Conference.  
__________  
                                                     
 
4 Dr R A Mashelkar, former Di rector-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial 
Research (CSIR) in India.