PatentScope on track to become world’s largest free database
In a speech given at the Global Technology Impact Forum on Monday, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) director general Francis Gurry announced his hopes to make PatentScope the largest free public database of technology disclosures in the world.
Addressing the topic of ‘Intellectual Property and Innovation Policy: 2012 Year in Review’, Gurry reviewed WIPO’s achievements for 2012 and outlined plans for 2013.
He said that externalising WIPO’s data would become ever more important this year, predicting the PatentScope database to become the largest of its kind by the first quarter of 2013.
PatentScope allows users to search around 20 million patent documents and applications.
In his speech, Gurry noted “innovative” sectors as the best performers in the aftermath of the economic crisis, with Asia emerging as a “centre of growth”. He said that investment in R&D is expected to rise by 3.7 percent in 2013, to $1.5trillion.
He highlighted the Beijing Treaty as a significant development for IP in the past year. It updated the international framework for copyright and related rights to take more account of the digital environment.
Gurry underline the importance of harmonising IP regulations in the future: “We have global economic behaviour, and we have global uses of technology, but we have national regulatory frameworks for intellectual property.
“We have to ... provide an international legal framework which will ensure an even playing field, and try to prevent recourse to technological mercantilism or technological protectionism as the stakes get higher ... in the field of technology.”
Gurry said that the number of Patent Cooperation Treaty applications in 2012 went up 6.3 percent to about 195,000 international patent applications, and that this is expected to increase again this year.
Gurry also proposed to involve the enterprise sector for the first time in WIPO’s annual meeting in September. He also said that WIPO was trying to accelerate R&D in tropical diseases, an area he branded a “market failure”.
Finally, he reiterated his hope that WIPO’s diplomatic conference in Marrakesh this June will give rise to a treaty to improve access to published works on the part of the visually impaired.
