WIPO unveils online monitoring dashboard
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has launched an online dashboard, allowing stakeholders to monitor the UN organisation's operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Announced on Wednesday, April 15, the web-based “ WIPO Crisis Management Dashboard” provides an overview of WIPO’s financial performance and its IP service on a month-by-month basis.
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system, the Madrid System and the Hague System, and their related financial services, are operating at or above 90% productivity.
Madrid productivity is at 99% and Hague productivity is at 93%, but PCT working requires customised IT arrangements which needed to be put in place, resulting in a temporary backlog and productivity of 89%.
Monthly filings in WIPO's international systems for patents, trademarks and industrial designs, provide more than 92% of the organization's revenues.
However, filings appear to be down against 2020 estimates. For PCT applications, filings have hit 56,143, 83% of the target for January-March this year.
Design applications have hit 87% of target, with filings hitting 1,599 in the first three months of the year, compared with a target of 1,835. Trademark applications amounted to 12,947 in the first three months of the year, 78% of the 16,650 target.
The data mirrors the slide in trademark applications at some of the world’s biggest IP offices. Trademark registers have now begun to stabilise at new, lower levels after dropping off in the middle of March.
WIPO director general Francis Gurry said: “I am happy to see that the new WIPO Crisis Management Dashboard shows a successful immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic by WIPO, whose personnel has quickly adapted to new remote-working arrangements and kept our international IP and other systems operating at near full capacity during this crisis.”
Approximately 96% of WIPO staff are now working remotely, and only essential staff are onsite.
Gurry added that like businesses everywhere, WIPO is implementing its crisis response, but as an international organisation and UN agency, it has an “extra obligation to real-time transparency as we adjust our operations during this emergency”.
Earlier this month, WIPO reported record results for the organisation’s global IP services and treaty-adherence activity.
International patent applications filed via the PCT grew by 5.2% to 265,800 in 2019. In 2009, 155,408 applicants were filed through the system, amounting to 71% growth in the ten-year period.
WIPO’s two-dozen plus treaties also gained 55 new accessions or ratifications in 2019.
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