Ladies and gentlemen, a very good afternoon to you all. Can you hear properly, because this is a very long room, as you may have noticed. And I don't think that the sound projects out. I think that you have to use this in order to hear. Is that correct? Are you okay if you're listening to this? It's all right? Okay. I apologize for this, you know, distance between us. The objective of the meeting is to reduce the distance between us, rather than to accentuate it. And I would like to thank you very much for having come this afternoon and made the effort to come. And I think if I may, I will start by introducing my colleagues, but also say a few words about the past year, about some of the priorities for the future, and some of the issues that we see looming on the intellectual property horizon. And of course, it'll be rather selective. It's not going to be covering, it's not going to be exhaustive in any, by any means, because I think what would be more interesting is to engage in a dialogue afterwards and to be interactive. So seated here on my left is Christian Wischer, who's the Deputy Director General for our Global Issues Sector. And on my right is Sherry Sadala, who's the Executive Director in charge of our Department of External Relations. And seated on my far left is Anna Morowitz, Mansfield, who is the head of our NGO and industry section. And I would, who's responsible for the organization of this meeting, and I would encourage you all to reach out to Anna, because her appointment actually was meant to be a signal that we are more and more serious about wanting to engage with you in the non-governmental sector. So any ideas that you have on ways in which we can do that better, then please feel free to talk to us about it. So let me start then with the results for last year. And I think, look, first of all, one of the things that we notice is that the demand for intellectual property titles consistently continues to consistently outperform the world economy. So if you look at the growth rates in the world economy across the last 15 years in particular, you see that the level of increase in the world economy is consistently lower than the level of increase in demand for intellectual property titles that we see, which is a natural expression of the increased investment in knowledge-based capital and the increased basis of wealth being, or the basis of wealth being increasingly knowledge-based capital or intellectual capital. So in terms of our systems, our international systems, in the PCT we saw that it grew by 5.1% last year. The first time we passed 200,000 international patent applications, 205,000 international patent applications. Interestingly, 80% of the growth came from two countries, China and the United States of America. So China, with about 15% growth, moved into third position in terms of the number of international patent applications filed. So it now goes to the United States of America, Japan, China, and fourth position, Germany. So China surpassed Germany last year for the very first time. And the United States of America, it grew, international patent applications grew by 10%, which is a really large number, a large amount, over a very high volume of about 26% of all applications. In our trademark system, Madrid system, growth was 6.4%, which was very good. So that's moving up, and I think that growth rate reflects also the geographical expansion of the system. 91 participating countries at the moment, and we expect that number to grow significantly in the coming years. And then last, our Hague system for industrial designs grew by 14.8%, which is a large figure, but it's on a very low volume at this stage. It's on a volume of about 3,000 international applications. And I think we will see that the Hague system will just be completely transformed in the course of the next two years, as a matter of fact, because within the next week or two, the Republic of Korea will join the Hague system for designs. Later this year, the United States of America, China, Japan, and the Russian Federation are all expected to join. So this is going to be a completely different system. And I think that this reflects also an increased heightened awareness of the value of design as a part of innovation. So let's take the iPhone as an example, and the iPhone added about $30 billion to the value of Apple Corporation, and only about 25% to 30% of the innovation was patents. The rest were designs and branding and marketing. So I think there is a heightened awareness of design as an essential element of the creative economy, and that is one of the reasons why we are seeing increased interest in the design system. In terms of our normative agenda, then if I may move to that, the outstanding result last year was the Marrakesh Treaty, and I'd like to extend our thanks to many of you who were involved in the development of the Marrakesh Treaty. We have done various analyses or thinking about why some treaties are successful and some other normative exercises are less successful. And I think one of the reasons, there are probably several reasons for that, one of the reasons is the engagement and alignment of civil society, I think. So if you look at the Beijing Treaty, I think that you had an important engagement and alignment on the part of both the studios and the actors. And that was important, as well as, you know, I summarise, as well as all the other parties that are interested in audio-visual performances. And I think if you look at Marrakesh, we ended up with an alignment between the World Blind Union and the visually impaired communities on the one hand and eventually the publishing communities and the rights holders on the other hand. So I think your engagement in these exercises is an essential element of the success of the exercises going forward. So the Marrakesh Treaty, I think, was an outstanding result. I've said before, but I'll repeat it again, that normally the measure of success multilaterally is that everyone is equally unhappy with the result. But this, in the case of Marrakesh, I think was truly an instance in which everyone was equally happy with the result. So it was an outstanding result, I think, which managed to, on the one hand, respect the international copyright system and its architecture, and on the other hand, deal with the specific needs of an identifiable and meritorious community, namely the visually impaired persons who are blind, visually impaired or print disabled. So thank you for all of your involvement in that. Going forward with our normative agenda, let me say that as you're aware, there are probably four exercises on that may come to maturity in the course of the next two years, in the course of this year and next year. So this, in our terms, biennium of 2014-15. And I will cite them without any particular, not in any particular order of priority, but just as they present themselves in a rough chronological order, it may be. But first of all, there is Designs Again, a proposed design law treaty, which would be a treaty really of business simplification. It's essentially procedural treaty and simplifying the procedures. When you look at what designers have to confront if they want to obtain protection across several jurisdictions for designs, which should be a rather simple matter, because in large part there is no substantive examination of the application. Usually there's no substantive examination of the application. They confront a bewildering array of complexity in procedures, and there's no good reason for that complexity. If there was a good reason for the complexity, then it can exist, of course, but there's no really good reason. So the exercise is really finding best practices for a simplified form of protecting designs, applying for design protection. We're very, very close on it, extremely close. Our committee met two weeks ago, I think, or last week. Our committee met last week, and I think many of you are aware that the outstanding issue is that certain countries, mainly certain developing countries, do not want to agree to the convening of a diplomatic conference to conclude the treaty, unless there is an article in the treaty, it is agreed that there is an article in the treaty, to provide technical assistance for compliance with the treaty. On the other hand, the United States and Canada are taking the position, now, I express it in its latest formulation, that they accept the possibility of an article in the treaty, but they do not accept that an article in the treaty is a condition of convening the diplomatic conference. So we're really down to fine distinctions, and you can see that this does not concern a substantive issue, and the substantive text is, you know, in very, very good shape for adoption. There's not many issues outstanding. We hope that by our May, extraordinary General Assembly, it's May 7 and 8, I think, we will get a positive decision to convene the diplomatic conference later this year, and we think that that would be a very good thing, but first, we don't want too many issues falling into 2015, or it becomes unmanageable, and there are too many connections made between not necessarily connected subject matters, first of all. And secondly, it would continue, I think, the process of confidence-building that we have seen amongst the member states with Beijing and then Marrakesh. So we think it's very important that the treaty does get concluded this year. Then I think we have, of course, the exercise of broadcasting, and I know a number of you wanted to talk about broadcasting. Well, I think we can say, and Michelle Woods is here, and also Carol Corella, who are both very much involved with this, and Carol has been for many years. And I think in the case of broadcasting, we had a very good meeting in December, but there's a lot of work to be done if the assemblies are going to decide in September this year to convene a diplomatic conference for 2015, which is the objective that they have set for themselves. So we are not pessimistic, we are cautiously, I'd say, cautiously optimistic, but there is a lot of work to be done, and we would just underline that. It looks like, and of course this is for the member states to decide, and the negotiation is underway, but it looks like the member states are edging towards a treaty which would have a fairly narrow scope. It would deal principally with the prohibition of the unauthorised reproduction of the broadcast signal on any media. Now, that's not agreed position, so please let me underline that. It's not accepted that that provision should be in there, and it's not accepted that the treaty should be limited to that. There are different, there's a number of views as usual about what the scope should be, but there is sort of a little bit of an edging towards this sort of an approach. Some would like it to be broader, more property rights to be included, others are a little hesitant about reproduction on all forms of media, so we need to, I think, more experience with this and to see where it goes, but I think the atmosphere is positive. Then we have the IGC, which is underway at the moment, as many of you know, in a two week meeting. It's the second meeting of three that are scheduled for this year. And look, frankly, this is a terribly difficult and challenging area. It's our 27th meeting, you know, and it is the 14th year of discussions. So this is really a marathon, and I have expressed the view before that I think it's the area of greatest political risk for the organisation. You know, we, the demanders are impatient, they have been waiting a long while, and we have to find a way of being able to deliver on this particular project. I'm happy to talk more about it, but let me say that it's not easy at all, and Christian is the first to know about this since it falls into his sector being sitting through the meeting this week in particular. So that's really a major challenge for the organisation. And then I'd say the fourth area that I'd signal is Lisbon Agreement for the international registration and protection of appellations of origin, appellations of origin, a species of geographical indication. There are 28 member states involved here who have decided that they want to revise the Lisbon Agreement, and they've decided at the moment the draft envisages that the new Lisbon Agreement, the revision, would provide for an international register that would cover both appellations of origin and geographical indications. If you would like to know the difference between appellation of origin and a geographical indication, I suggest you consult the oracle at Delphi. You know, it's a matter which is fine distinction legally, but the inclusion of geographical indications in an international register is perceived as being a huge step forward because this has been under discussion internationally in one form or another for a long, long time. And it is an opportunity to establish a truly international register dealing with this area which I would emphasise is of growing importance like most areas of intellectual properties of growing importance, I think, because in an age of globalization and standardisation, I think that diversity has a greater value, and people look for the specificity of products which is linked to geographical origin. And I think we could also say that in an age of global value chains, authenticity also has a greater value, and for both of these reasons we find geographical indications being more and more, I'd say, valuable. So that's our normative agenda. Going forward, I'm going to stop talking in a moment, and I did want to mention perhaps three areas which are not specifically program-related, but I think areas of great interest to the organisation or to intellectual property. One is a fairly abstract point, but I would say that one of the biggest challenges for, I want to move to the most general level of intellectual property, I would say that one of the biggest challenges for intellectual property in the future will be getting the right balance between collaboration and competition. So I think that there is a big tension between these two things. So what we see actually is a bigger emphasis on each of those things, I think. At this place, a bigger emphasis on cooperation. You see that in open innovation, which envisages innovation structures and global knowledge networks that are connected. You see it, I think, in global value chains. You can't have a global value chain unless there's cooperation amongst a number of different actors, and the basis of the cooperation is usually information and technology.  Again, much emphasis on the sharing economy in certain sectors. So you see this great emphasis on cooperation on the one hand, and a lot of developments related to that. On the other hand, we see that in the knowledge economy, competitive advantage is conferred by innovation and intellectual property and knowledge and information. So a greater emphasis on intellectual property is the basis of competition. And I think this tension between cooperation on the one hand and competition on the other hand is one of the issues that is going to be under consideration in intellectual property in the future. And actually, if you were to read an article by Samuel Palmissana, who was the president and CEO of IBM, called the Globally Integrated Enterprise that was published about three years ago, four years ago in foreign affairs, you see that he talks a little bit about this and says that for this reason, intellectual property will be one of the major geopolitical issues of the 21st century finding this balance between information technology being the means of collaboration but also the means of competition. So now I move off the very general, if I may, and say that in two other areas I'd like to mention very briefly. One is the digital economy. So I would like to very much like to see or to encourage the member states engage in a dialogue about the digital environment and intellectual property. Of course that's happening. Of course that's happening. It's been happening internationally also since the early 90s in the sense when the internet treaties of 1996 were first envisaged. So in a certain sense that's happening but of course in another sense there are many, many developments occurring in this space which are both an opportunity for intellectual property and a threat to intellectual property. And I think we need to pay close attention to this space and I'm very keen in seeing a dialogue develop on the global, legal global digital marketplace and how we get to such a result. And I don't think that this is a normative exercise. I'm not proposing a normative exercise here at all. It may be that there are certain normative tweaks that needs attention in the copyright system and the environment for example the first sale doctrine or the John Travolta, if you like the John Travolta problem of buying 50,000 tunes on iTunes, songs on iTunes and then wanting to know whether he can give them to his children, bequeath them to his children because if he bought 50,000 CDs he could. But you can't actually. So there may be certain areas that require tweaking but I think we're talking really about the machinery of the marketplace and how it operates data standards and so on and I am interested in trying to encourage a dialogue on this and the last area I would say is in the development capacity building area the area of appropriate technology. So I think over the last couple of years we have been able to put in place a number of the tools which facilitate at least the passive transfer of technology or the transfer of passive technology. Our program for technology and innovation support centres for example our program with publishers, the scientific medical and technical and medical publishers where they make available scientific journals free of charge to LDCs, many ones in LDs in a least developed country and at a very moderate cost to low income, middle income developing countries. So those tools I think are very useful but what I have heard in certainly in some of my visits to least developed countries is that it's one thing having the source of technology in a written form and it's another thing knowing how to actually do this. And so I think the area of appropriate technology is one that we can look at profitably in the future but of course we always must be aware that we are not we are an agency which is concerned with intellectual property so we would be likely to be doing some of this in collaboration with others who would be more practical agencies I think but I think it's an area that we need to pay attention to. Now there are many things that I have not mentioned for example our newly named, if I'm allowed to name it, Accessible Books Consortium which is the artist formerly known as the Stakeholders Platform or WIPO Global Research or many of these things where we have very active cooperation with NGO sector but perhaps they can come out in the course of our dialogue and I should stop talking and be very happy to hand the floor to you. So please take advantage of it. We have two ladies, yes, please. Thank you very much. Alexandra Patechari from the Third World Network. I just had a general question about the implementation of the development agenda. What is your assessment in the past few years in terms of how far it's been implemented and mainstreamed into WIPO activities? I know the CDIP is discussing an independent review of the development agenda so I just wanted to get your feeling about this process. Thank you. Well naturally I'm going to have a rosy view of this matter and I do because look, I think that if you go back to 2008 what the development agenda was in May of 2008 46 recommendations were adopted and that was the development agenda. So what we've done over the succeeding six years is look at practical ways to implement those 46 recommendations and those practical ways consist first of all in the 23 I think projects that we have formulated and executed and had evaluated and three or so that are continuing projects in various forms and that has been to a value of about 26 million Swiss francs. So I think those projects have by and large been very successful. Now the development agenda is not just about projects as you know and everyone is aware but we have two treaties, two multilateral treaties that mention the development agenda which is the very first time that that has ever occurred so both the Beijing Treaty and the Marrakesh Treaty mention, acknowledge the development agenda in their preambles and that area of seeing the development agenda reflected in our normative program is not a secretariat mission. It's not something that we are capable of doing. It's something that the member states have to decide amongst themselves how to give expression to it in the normative agenda. And then mainstreaming, well, I think we've made a lot of progress in this respect. The process with the projects has been to make them part of the regular program and budget. We have a situation in which we hope that our development dimension and our development perspective is not compartmentalised into one sector but is something that is considered across the organisation in all of the activities that the secretary is involved in. So in all of our activities and programmes we seek to consider the development agenda, a development dimension of the activities and programmes concern. So I think that we've come a long way actually and I said earlier that I think that the area of greatest political risk for us as an organisation is the IGC process. If you would ask me that question six years ago I would have said the development agenda and I don't think it is such an area of political risk now because I think we have made good progress on it and nothing is perfect. So please, if you would like to give several questions then it's better that you all speak. I'm sure if it's working. My name is Erika Duenas and I work for the Medicines Patent Pool and I'd like to thank you for the invitation to this meeting and my question is related to public health and intellectual property if you have some plans or projects to share with us here. Thank you. Thank you very much. We don't have any... Look, I think what's happening is first of all our WIPO research with which you are familiar or shall I say something about... You're familiar with it, yes indeed. So that... We're very keen on improving the participation areas, improving the collaborations that are concluded under it and improving the hosting agreements that take place under it. So we think it's an important mechanism for accelerating the sharing of research and intellectual property in these areas as well as building capacity. So that's one program that we are keen on seeing develop further. As you know in our Standing Committee of Patents there is one of the items under discussion or proposed to be under discussion is patents and health. I don't think that I'm unaware of any normative agenda associated with that as opposed to at this stage at any rate a discussion about it. And then I think that our role is trying to provide supportive technical explanatory explanations where possible to other instances where the issue of the intersection of health and intellectual property may arise. And finally we are involved in an active cooperation with the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization under which we hold a seminar together with the three directors general of those organizations being involved and under which we have published a publication as you know on access to medical technologies and intellectual property and innovation. So that's the scope of our activities at the moment and we're not seeing I think anything outside of that coming from the member states. Thank you Director General. I had three questions to raise but I think for the sake of time I'll just stick to two. One of them deals with technical assistance which has already come up. So would you see the technical assistance that WIPO is currently providing in the areas of patents and industrial property? Do you see that as consistent with the WTO Doha Declaration mandate of using trips flexibilities to provide access to medicines for all? And secondly in terms of both technical assistance and in terms of balance, in terms of technical assistance does WIPO have a policy in terms of conflicts of interest and in terms of seminars, conferences and panels does WIPO have a policy on balance? So for example on the issue of patents and health we recently made aware of a meeting jointly convened by Greece and WIPO on innovation and access to medicines and what concerned us was that when we looked at the program there wasn't really any participation or room for public interest voices on the program. Thanks. Yes, so thank you. So on the first one, well, look, as you know technical assistance in terms of legislative or policy advice is demand driven. So it has to come first from the member states, the request and it's also guided by the policy orientations that they wish to adopt. But of course without fail we illustrate, we demonstrate the full range of policy options that are available to member states in accordance with the existing international regimes for intellectual property trips and the DOA decoration. So this is something that is a matter of standard practice for us. And then it's up to the member states to make their policy choices on that basis. Conflicts of interest, we have various, well we have, as you know, a chief ethics officer and we have various policies on conflicts of interest. I don't know whether we have considered it also from the angle of participants as lecturers or presenters at conferences and meetings. I think we need to think about that further because we may have no one at the meeting. Because I don't see who isn't interested in one way, either as a producer or a consumer. So we need to, I think, think about that. You can think of an acute example in the area of medicines but is an actor interested party in a legal framework for the protection of copyright? So I think this is something we'd need to reflect on a little bit to have a firm position on. Please, gentlemen, here. Thank you. My name is Rolth Malpani. I'm with Medicines on Frontiers Access Campaign. I'm the policy director. I'll start with a couple questions although perhaps eventually some of my colleagues will have some also. It was good to bring up WIPO Research which is welcome in one sense in that it is looking at the problems of innovation and the fact that our current patent system does not meet many of the needs of people living in developing countries but we have been fairly concerned that it doesn't really meet the needs that exist today with respect to medical innovation and it is not a true pooling mechanism as much as it is just sort of a database of existing, let's say, opportunities without any real structure to push forward with collaborations. So I think it's welcome from our standpoint if there's a real serious rethink around how to make WIPO Research work so that it more accurately meets the needs of medical innovation today. But my question in particular with WIPO Research is our concern with the geographic scope of the agreements which is that it only requires 49 least developed countries to be included in the access provisions which from our perspective is inadequate when you look at the disease burden today increasingly in developing countries which sits increasingly outside of least developed countries. So leaving out in particular middle income countries were a vast majority of people suffering from neglected diseases even diseases like TB is increasing and also where the vast majority of people living in poverty are living today means that WIPO Research is really excluding the vast majority of people affected by these diseases. As a separate question maybe to follow up so it just would be to get your feedback or reflection on what we consider to be a problem with WIPO Research. A second question we would have is more specifically around technical assistance going to developing countries. One of our concerns has been the repeated use of these seminars to push the idea of pushing for anti-counterfeiting measures which in our opinion is a subset of a much larger problem around the quality of medicines which actually should focus upon the quality of medicines and quality assurance measures and we are concerned that these workshops often are over emphasizing anti-counterfeiting measures and are sacrificing the need to focus on public health interventions to ensure that patients have access to quality assured products. On the first point we are always happy to engage in dialogue and would be happy to engage in dialogue with you about the shape and direction of BVMH. I would say two comments if I may you can only build with what you've got with the materials that are available. So what we are trying to do is to engage different parties in doing what they are prepared to do. So we might have a different participation if we change the nature of the thing. So we've got to do what is practical and what is possible I think first of all. Secondly I would just restate what you've said about the middle income countries just to make it clear so that everyone understands the sharing is free. So it doesn't matter whether you're a least developed country or a middle income country you are able to acquire subject to it being available the intellectual property or the unpublished scientific data for the purposes of research free of charge there's no license fee there. The license fee attaches to sale if you develop a product on that basis and you sell it then that's when the license fee kicks in. So that's to put it in context and in that respect there is a license fee for the sale of products for middle income countries. So then on the technical assistance and quality assurance we would of course agree with you that this is a larger problem of quality assurance as the unrememberable acronym of the WHO working group tells us however we are only an intellectual property agency we can't stray into fields of quality assurance. Now let's put it in context with other collaborators other partners fine we're quite prepared to do that but we have to stick to our remit and that remit is not does not cover quality assurance mechanisms other quality insurance mechanisms that WHO has a responsibility for but we would be happy to see if we can make that more apparent that this is part of our larger problem rather than the only problem in the area. Benoit? After you. Thank you. Mr. Director very happy to be here. Yes. I'm a representative of an environment program so we are African NGO and my question is concerning how can you in this research protect the rise of those who are traditional medicines? Thank you. Well it's under discussion at the moment in the Intergovernmental Committee that's a major part of the discussion and as you know we have texts on the table for this and those texts have been discussed for a long while and what we're looking for really at this stage is a breakthrough. We're looking for a way to express I think the need to express the gaps in the intellectual property system with respect to traditional knowledge. So I think one such gap is the original empirical observation of cause and effect to genetic resources and there are many examples of that so if you look at the Houdia plant the original observation empirical observation if you eat that plant it has an effect of appetite suppression or the original empirical observation that that variety of wild rice was not subject to blight when all cultivated varieties of wild rice were subject to blight. I think that's what's not being captured in the intellectual property system at the moment. Someone who comes afterwards a scientist and will locate the active ingredient or the active molecule which is responsible for that effect is covered but the original empirical observation is not and I think we're not capturing that sufficiently in the texts at the moment so there is a big discussion about this and there's no easy answer I'm afraid but it's a high priority for the organization. Benoit Thank you Director General. You talked about the landmark successes of the Marrakesh and the Beijing should say in the other order the Beijing and the Marrakesh Treaty and my question is what is why planning in the current biennium to promote ratification and faithful implementation and would you be able to guess when either of these two instruments are likely to enter into force. Thank you. Thank you very much Benoit and yes you're absolutely right there's no point in having a new treaty unless it is serving the purpose so we are looking to those member states who express the demand for the treaty to help us by ratifying the treaty you know it's one thing to say you absolutely must have this treaty you absolutely must have it and then they probably don't ratify it so we are looking to put a little bit of pressure back on the member states who were demanders for either of those treaties to actually come forward now I think lots of things that said lots of things are happening around the world so we had a meeting last year in the month of December if I'm not mistaken where we had at the ministerial level for West African countries and they covered both Beijing and Marrakesh and we got I think extremely good commitments from all of the countries of 14 countries represented 16 countries represented of their intentions to proceed to ratify both of those treaties I think we run into the problem around the world always of priorities that there are lots of priorities on legislative time and we have to get slot our way into that those legislative agendas I believe that in the United States there are active preparations for the process of ratification of both of the treaties although there's a long way to go so I think there are many signs that we see, we also see it in terms of the number of countries that ask for authentic copies of the treaties because that's what they need to put before their decision and that's a good indicator that they're actually seriously in the process Hazarding a guess is, well as they say you know it's very dangerous to make predictions especially about the future so I'd say a couple of years we need please My name is Enrico Natale I'm the half of the International Federation of Library Association I want to thank you for the meeting and this opportunity to meet you and state that EFLA is committed to the ongoing discussion inside the NCCR on the matter of copyright exceptions and limitation for libraries and archives we're looking forward to the next 27th session of the CCR and we are actually working with our members to source relevant information for the discussion especially on the fact that libraries are central actors of the knowledge economy but also that they do not operate anymore in a national framework and in this context we are a little bit concerned by the fact that equal time would be dedicated to the discussion on exception and limitation for library and archives in regard also to the discussion of the broadcasting treaty so we would welcome the idea of an intercession especially dedicated to the limitation exception for library and I wanted to ask you what guarantees can you maybe provide to the fact that equal time would be dedicated to both objects Why don't we collect a few more questions and then I'll come back if I may and come to the libraries ok please gentlemen here Thank you Thank you I'm from the center for internet and society an organization from India I'm not sure if this question should be addressed to you or to the secretary at large one of the things we were concerned about is the possibility for increasing remote participation seeing that we're from a developing country our budget doesn't really allow us to participate in the meetings as possible so if there's some mechanism for us to not only follow the meetings online but also to possibly participate in the meetings that would be great Thanks Thank you very much Please the lady here then the lady on the right lady at the end and the lady on the right ok thank you my name is yeah thank you very much director so my name is Yuan Chuo I'm from medicine and I have three little questions regarding the topic of public health because regarding the feedback you just gave in in terms of technical assistance I wanted to follow, for your opinion in the context of development agenda you mentioned there is a proposal in discussion relating to patent and public health is have been going on for near 4 sessions patent without approval. Although we appreciate it is a member state-driven process, but I do see there is a leaking of commitment or correct direction from the secretarial level in terms of guiding this discussion going forward. A number of examples, for instance, the research or the studies prepared by the secretarial on the patent exceptions and the limitations may turn the very neutral tone without really integrating the development agenda recommendations, say we need to mainstream some of the public health perspective in the technical analysis. So I think in this regard, I want to know what would be the forward plan from the secretarial level to moving this agenda forward after four sessions of discussion. And secondly, a few questions about the patent information transparency, which has also been discussed in the context of public health. For instance, the proposal that hasn't been approved mentioned the recommendation of including INA into the pharmaceutical patent disclosure, which from a public health perspective is very important to identify the variety of patents around the given medicine, which is often a strategy used by the industry to prolong the monopoly in the market. So in this regard, there hasn't been really very much study or position given from the Vipo side to guide this discussion forward. So I just want to know what's your opinion on this. And then probably last question is about our colleague from KEI's question about technical assistance inconsistent with the Doha declaration. So I wonder, although you have explained the standards procedure and the practice of Vipo, but I'm wondering in cases, well, the national patent law is under reform, but sometimes the country was put under very heavy political pressure to adopt trips plus provisions or other provisions that might have the harmful impact on the public health and other public interests in the country. And it's very rare to say Vipo has given any position or analysis in those circumstances. So I was wondering, is there any comments from your side, whether this is the mandate to demand or whether Vipo is considering to engage more of this political economy discussion in terms of country patent law reform? Thank you. Thank you very much. Amit, we'll take one and then I'll respond to a few. Thank you, Director General, and thank you for the opportunity of having this discussion. My question related to the U.M. post 2015 development agenda, I know the sector of external relations has been following this closely. I'm participating in the New York meetings, but this question is very paramount on all the U.N. system now, and there's a lot of interest in it. So in addition to Vipo following the U.M. process and being part of the U.N. task team, I think there could be appetite for a kind of a seminar or a discussion on that with different stakeholders and it could be very timely. There's a lot of interest in that and I'm encouraged by seeing that tomorrow there's a special book presentation on why global development succeeds that is hosted by the Economics Division. So it was just a suggestion on this issue. Thank you. And thank you very much. Yes, please. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity here to speak. My name is Kabola Struil. I'm representing Collecting Societies for Fine Arts and Photography, European Collecting Societies, and I have two issues I would like to mention. One thing is you were talking about the digital economy and the dialogue you want to initiate. And I would be much appreciating to be, if our constituency would be included in this, because we're extremely concerned about the more and more industry-led solutions which are putting the authors' rights in their position more and more in the back stage. I just heard about the new draft of the Spanish legislation which includes a new remuneration right for kind of Google services where explicitly visual creators are excluded from remuneration in the legislation, which I think is discriminatory. That's something of particular concern. The other issue I want to raise here is the resale right for the artists and I'm particularly grateful for the lunch event which was organized with the help of Michel and Carol in December and which attracted many interested parties and many member countries' delegates being there. And my question is about the follow-up and possible technical assistance. We have now also the interest coming from African countries and in particular Senegal is interested in taking a lead to demand support from Waipo in this matter. First of all, it's about making the right work in the countries where it is in the legislation but not applied in Africa. There is a growing interest because contemporary artworks are bought at cheap prices from the artists in Africa and sold at high prices in London and nothing flows back to the countries. That is my question. What could be done? There are member countries also from developing countries interested to raise the question. Okay, well let's have a shot at some of those and then we'll come back. So first on guaranteeing equal times, I'm afraid we can't give guarantees but the intention is equal time for IFLA. The intention is equal time and it's not really within our capacity to force member states to do anything really. I would say, look, the only other thing to consider is that we have to take issues one at a time. We don't have any better way of doing things and the best way is to take things as they are, as the most mature presents itself. Now I understand that libraries feel that, you know, there was a timetable set and this is very important. On the other hand, broadcasters have been talking since 1996 about their rights. So it's not like it's a new issue that has suddenly crept in and pushed libraries out of the way, on the contrary. So I think, you know, the intention is there for equal time but with a little bit of patience, I think the member states will progressively knock off one after the other. On remote participation for the Centre for Internet and Society from India, I think it's a good suggestion if I may say. We have, as you know, fairly recently only provided for remote viewing and so remote participation will be a new phase. I think that will have to be discussed with the member states because it's a question of time management too, but a certainly a very valid point. On the series of questions from MSF, look, I would have the following comments to make. We've got, first of all, as far as the SCP is concerned and its agenda, I think one of the big questions that's arising amongst the membership for discussion at the moment is the number of meetings that we have as an organisation and how to manage that. So a lot of member states have expressed the view that we have too many meetings, first of all, and secondly that our meetings are too inefficient. So in an era in which public resources are stretched and in which governments have to find budgets to send delegates to participate in meetings, we are hearing them saying increasingly, well, we would like to see a better output to input ratio and more efficiency. Now one of the things that's arisen, I think, questions in relation to the public health question in the normative committee of the standing committee on patents is to what extent is this a normative question and to what extent is this a pre-normative dialogue or discussion because if it's a pre-normative dialogue or discussion, then maybe you can hold a conference for it and that would get a freer exchange of opinions because people would be less constrained that they're in a negotiating mode and I think that's one of the things that is animating people's mind in that particular area. The second thing I would say is please don't ask the secretariat to do the work of the member states. We can't make people agree on anything. Our job is to facilitate and so we can't be taking a position. We must be taking a position which is neutral and which facilitates a discussion between interested parties. We're not an interested party. The interested parties are the ones that have to take their position so I understand that you have very strong views understandably because you're working on the front line and very interested in saving lives and so I understand that but you are an interested party. We are not and we can't be an interested party in this discussion. There's no more sensitive issue in my view in the intellectual property world than health and intellectual property and I don't think that there is any one simple answer to it. I'm afraid it's a very, very complex question. As you know, a very complex question is going to remain a complex question and we're going to have to find the balance between encouraging investment in innovation because we do need that. There is absolutely no doubt that we need to have investment in innovation on the one hand and on the other hand sharing the social benefit of the innovation. There's no point in having innovation unless there is a social benefit to it. That's just not an easy question and all we can do is facilitate a dialogue which we hope comes up with equilibrium positions here, here, here, here, here without anyone being absolutely right. Then on the question of pressure, I'd give a similar answer. We can't substitute ourselves for governments. Governments have to stand on their own two feet and assess what their priorities are in the context of their agendas and what we have to do is to provide neutral professional advice as to the full scope of possibilities that are available to the governments. Then for Ahmed, I think, thank you very much for your suggestion. I see STD and thank you very much for your suggestion. Post 2015 agenda, yes, only thing I would say is that one of the major challenges of that is going to be to have a manageable and comprehensible post 2015 agenda and 60 priorities is not going to do it. That's our problem, I think, from our perspective. We would love priority number one to be innovation and number two, cultural creativity, but that's just not going to happen. There are more pressing priorities. Then on fine arts and photography, yes, of course, the point of the dialogue would be to be inclusive and to hear all points of view about this. There are precisely the sorts of difficulties to which you point, I think, are the reasons why we need the dialogue, because a lot is happening in this space and a lot of the developments, which may be business or industry developments, have policy implications and that's why I think we need to bring those out in a dialogue. On the resale, right, yes, thank you very much for this event, which as you say was a very successful event. I think it's got some promise because going back to why Beijing and Marrakesh happened, one of the reasons I cited earlier was the alignment of interests in civil society, if you like, and I think another reason was the identification of an issue that was specific and that required a technical solution and that could assemble a political consensus. I think everyone was happy to come around the specific issue of actors or audiovisual performances and say it is an injustice that they are not covered in the international copyright framework and everyone is able to come around VIPs and say it is an injustice, the book famine, and we need to address it. I think the resale right may be such an issue that you can get an international consensus around, maybe. I wouldn't want to be so excited for being too radical about this but it is just the sort of issue that you might be able to do something on because people can see the reason for it. It is apparent, it is transparent the need for the artist and it is not too much to bite off, it is something that is achievable with a specific and technical solution. I would encourage you to continue. Christina Malopinto, I am representing the Iberia American Alliance of Broadcasters for Intellectual Property and you have mentioned the Broadcasting Treaty and I think we agree with your view that it is, there was a lot of work, of progress done in the last meetings but it is the most mature subject in the SCCR agenda but given there is also a lot of work to be done especially on the treaty language for the next SCCR, how do you think, what is your view that at the next SCCR we can progress constructively especially given the lack of flexibility of some member states. Okay, thank you very much. Another one? Yes, please, gentlemen here. Thank you Director General for this opportunity and Massimo Vittori representing Origin which is probably one of the few institutions on top of the Oracle that would be in the position to explain the difference between the eyes. So that is why not surprisingly a lot of interest for Lisbon so we are very pleased with the advancement, with the works and probably next year the calling of diplomatic conference and we believe that on top of the treaty making work we should, we encourage, why put a lot of emphasis on technical assistance for developing countries that to be in a position to join this treaty should have the possibility to consolidate some of the existing geographical indication of Origin and in this respect also we would like to encourage, why put to work on some new trends of international cooperation namely the possibility for instance for multinational corporations in the agribusiness, in the agrifood business to work with developing countries to develop alliances in order to help these countries to to come up with geographical indication in the field of coconut or coffee for instance there are a lot of examples that are very successful and I think we would be happy also to provide you some inputs in this respects we have some of our members that have signed these kind of agreements and are very successful and somehow they modify one of the generalized concept that multinational and developing countries all the time have clashes. The second issue is the generic top level domains and we are aware that the trade might have left the station probably in some respects we're aware of also some problems with ICANN governance although some progress also are being made in these days we would like why put to work and to provide some intellectual inputs vis-a-vis in particular vis-a-vis the risks that generic string like the dot wine dot organic dot food might pose in terms of generally speaking to confer somehow monopoly rights to private companies that will manage in the future those strings some of them have been already delegated for instance i'm thinking dot coffee again to to link it up with developing countries and also the more classical problem of the possibility for geographical indications to be part of the uniform this resolution mechanism policy because now they are excluded and also some to work and to clarify some legal uncertain uncertainty with respect to the trademark clearing house we have heard that geographical indication might qualify to be included in the trademark clearing house but it's not clear if this is true and like some work to be done in this respect probably as you mentioned the digital economy and IPR agenda for instance something that could fit thank you great thank you very much the gentleman down the end yeah um yeah my name is dr. balasagrum i'm work with mezzas on frontier as well and in fact i just want to make up a couple of comments first of all i'd like to thank you for convening this meeting and giving us the opportunity to meet and talk to you secondly i would i'd just like to give you perspective not talking as someone coming from my organization but someone with 20 years experience as a medical doctor and a public health physician very much working in the in in the international perspective um i i do understand very much the point that you made about collaboration and competition and i do agree with you that this is going to be one of the big challenges and coming from the public health field in fact we do see a very big tension between the collaboration aspect and the competition aspect and it's very much reflected in this whole innovation versus access debate which i think is often presented in very much a kind of false dichotomy but ultimately what i would say to you is that as a public health physician i have i really do struggle to to understand what the current framework of the intellectual property system offers to the public health community why do i say that well if you look at some of the the issues around the public health guarantees and safeguards that were discussed more than 10 years ago and debated and even enshrined in declarations we see a very strong pushback coming back through a lot of trade agreements that are really promoting measures that that are called trips plus but we don't really perceive as being in the public health interest and i think that i think this is a very fundamental point because it's it raises on another issue you talked about which is about budgets and affordability and one of the big struggles we have in the field of public health is the fact that we are we are facing an era of moving into a very cash trapped perspective of governments you know having struggling to meet their own budgets but even international organizations like us are struggling to rationalize medical care i don't think that it's i feel i'm a radical to talk about public health as a as an interest it's not an interest of an individual group it's in everybody's it's a societal need and a societal benefit and i would strongly encourage WIPO to start thinking in terms of public health as as something as a societal benefit and something that belongs to society and not an individual or group kind of activist push and therefore i really really ask you know i what can WIPO do in this area i think it's important for WIPO to reflect a little bit on the impact of some of these new measures on public health and i think maybe to understand a bit better possibly the negative impacts and provide advice to countries and governments because you you mentioned about you know policy choices being in the realm of individual governments well that's true in theory but in practice we know that it's a much more complicated picture and on top of that when you talk about public health you often have to be more transnational in your approach because international public health interventions go beyond individual countries needs desires and i would say interests and therefore i think you know the policy guidance and that WIPO can offer on i think the challenges that some of these shifts in intellectual property can have on public health is is quite important i'd like to finish by the comment going back again about this tension between innovation and access i can i work in several disease fields i'm not a specialist in one area but in many of these fields we've really seen a real lack of innovation and in the last 10 years we have overtly dependent on public funding and philanthropic funding so it's very difficult to understand how this system is really working for us and likewise into i've also spent 10 years working in r&d and drug development and i know for well that in fact your point about collaboration is very important if we are looking at true needs driven r&d we need much more collaboration in the field and in fact fragmentation of the r&d has been a major problem and why in fact i think we haven't delivered in a timely fashion so i would just like to end there because i don't i am not a technical or legal person um but i wanted to just mainly give a public health perspective uh well thank you very much to me mad perhaps knock off a few and then we'll come back to or try to deal with a few uh so um look for the ibero-american broadcasting alliance first of all you know welcome and this is a great development that that's you exist and that you'll we will have an another i think occasion at the next standing committee on copyright to to hear from you in a side event um we can't cure unfortunately you know the lack of flexibility that might be demonstrated by certain member states unfortunately uh and it's a very painful process of course and uh this long process of trying to get people on the same page so i don't have a a ready answer for you on that but um you know i would remain cautiously underlined optimistic cautiously uh i understand there are some who are locked in mental frameworks that belong to a different technological reality uh and that is not helping us go forward so we will we'll see i think we'll have a better idea after the next standing committee for origin there were a great deal of questions uh we see that rising interest in developing countries and we are doing more and more that related to geographical indications because of course agriculture is fundamental to uh most economies in uh most developing economies and we see this is a good way of of being able to advance the specificities of that each of those countries have to to offer um you know uh on as you put it for the multinationals in the agri food business we'll of course have to get a clearance from our new conflict regime uh when we approach this but generally speaking i think public private partnerships have a lot to offer and a lot to offer uh and a lot to offer in terms of practical assistance in how to get off the ground on the gtlds well um there are a lot of questions here um and uh you know it's not an easy environment which to operate we don't take the policy decisions wipo doesn't take the policy decisions those decisions taken by i can now as you mentioned we've seen some uh movement in that space recently which may suggest uh an evolution in the way in which i can operates in the future uh and so that may provide more opportunities to be able to uh deal with some of the intellectual property questions or it may provide less opportunity we're not quite sure actually yet which way that that will evolve um and on the intellectual input that you would like to see us contribute well it reminded me when you said that that when we did our uh first internet domain name process back in the late 90s on this we had we opened up our recommendations for public comment and one of the comments was you know that the recommendations were a disgrace and please take the word intellectual out of your title so uh but we will try to make some intellectual input into have some intellectual we try to work with i can all the time to sensitize them to that but intellectual probably is not necessarily their highest priority uh they they're going elsewhere uh but thank you for your comments in this regard and then to dr balisubramaniam i think was it it was if i get your name correctly uh well thank you for all of those comments and i appreciate it but look one of the things that i would point out to you if i may is that we don't have a binary environment for intellectual property anymore at all you know if you went back 20 years or 30 years you did have a binary environment you had the national and you had the multilateral but now we have this extremely complex environment policy environment in which you have national agendas bilateral agendas plural lateral agendas you know and then regional agendas and then multilateral agendas and that's a very complex environment which i think is new to all of us we're all trying to understand what it means and why it's happening uh and so we're stuck a little uh in this so i think if i may say if you'll permit me you are tending to conflate intellectual property across all of those different environments the developments in all of them with the multilateral i mean we're one part of it uh and our influence is is is limited to that one part uh so we have no influence over bilateral negotiations we have no influence over plural lateral negotiations that's the reality that's why they make them bilateral and plural lateral you know that's the whole point so that's a very complex environment that i think we see now which is a relatively new phenomenon i would say and um and we have to negotiate and uh uh navigate that environment in a way which maintains the relevance of the multilateral naturally we sitting here believe in the multilateral we believe that the multilateral gives states the greatest amount of protection uh it uh it reduces vulnerabilities of states to operate in a multilateral environment but the reality of the world today is that it's a multi-speed world just looking at it that's the reality uh and i think that we need to be looking you know thinking about that architecture uh and what it means for policy development uh because that's that's how it's happening but well many of your other comments you know i'm totally understand and you know sympathize with so the lady here please i'm filaya representative filaya is a latin american organization that represents performers rights and thank you mr director general for bringing giving us the opportunity of this meeting um uh there are two points where i would like to rise the attention one is the that in spite of the wppt treaty which uh regulated the uh the rights in the internet we are um seeing now and we are worried because performance rights are weakening in the internet scope in spite of this regulation um and this is why because all the right holders which are in a better bargaining position than performers are um uh weakening this this position of them and these rights um in our view we should find a way where performers could be fairly remirated in the internet scope um and in our view this could be uh following a system um similar to the directive uh for um rental rights and uh rental and lending rights in europe which uh states uh a remuneration right for performers similar to the uh to the rental right um included in it so um it could be a way to strengthen the performance right and to avoid this weakening of them that because even the directive the european directive is in the in the end stronger than the wppt treaty and filaya performers are uh in a wider um scope than the european scope this is why we would like to to to have uh some action from wipe or to see how it could be uh improved to to to get this right uh in the internet scope for performers and the second question relates to the broadcaster's treaty as you said the broadcaster's treaty is going to be um to be to focus only uh in a very restricted and limited area uh in our view if the broadcaster's treaty is for the protection of the signal um it could be a good way to to regulate um the the scope and the rights of of the broadcasters but in any case um we see that broadcasters are going to be granted uh some rights and we would like that performers are balanced have uh their rights in a balanced way um refer to broadcasters we mean that uh they should be a possibility of authorizing uh of asking the authorization of of the rights to performers and to other right holders such as producers in this case um or at least a remuneration right for them because on the contrary uh or a broadcasting treaty that is uh same to protect um the broadcasters we weaken also the performers rights so uh it would be um better to balance this thank you very much uh thank you very very much so i'm françois curshaw representing cp the center for international intellectual property studies uh thank you very much for this opportunity to meet with us on a yearly basis this is much appreciated by everybody i think um last year you you said that one of the big focuses for wipo in the coming two years would be improving the madrid system and uh work to improve the madrid system has started in a very satisfactorily manner and i would like simply to encourage you and your staff to go on in that direction thank you um thank you very much amir sorry i apologize for for for taking the floor again it was not my intention but i was prompted by one of the interventions um you know the maracas treaty was was a historic treaty of many counts and one of them actually that is not often uh noticed is to my knowledge is the first international intellectual property instrument that contains in its preamble a reference to human rights and human rights instruments and that uh brings the whole debate about the issue of intellectual property and human rights and that is debated in many fora most recently the the council of human rights in geneva statement was made by almost 90 countries urging international IP organizations to adopt the human rights approach in their work uh i'm just pointing to that in the sense that this is i think an emerging issue many countries including egypt i just wrote about that have adopted human right um ip in their constitution under human rights uh and and and if you call it as areas of political risk i see that people many people are are grappling with with this equation also and um i know it's fraught with a lot of difficulties for for for for wipo but i mean i have been interested in this and i when i google this on uh wipo and human rights what appears is a 1998 report of a very interesting seminar that was held between the office of the high commissioner and wipo on this issue for the first fiftieth anniversary of the human uh universal human rights declaration but i think it's an area that that again there's a lot of appetite for it and and again i know that that you see you longer far in the horizons uh uh before things uh kind of um become challenging me thank you hens and thank you mr director channel i'm piercer from health and environment program first of all i would like to thank you for the occasion to meet you and to get the better insight of what happens at wipo and what will happen in the near future you mentioned the i cc procedure as a political problem and you are surely right because not longer ago than yesterday evening a sweden expressed his will to withdraw from the these processes and the ambassador dore mccook when mccook was obliged to interrupt the session and to find a way to get sweden back to the to the negotiation so could you just give some ideas in which way you you would try to push the d i cc forward to in order to get to to an end before everybody will be too tired or maybe even that thank you thank you very much thank you hens um i'm yen spammler from the international publishers association and i would like to first make a comment on the far too long and lengthy and extensive number of meetings we're having at wipo and then i'd like to suggest another one another meeting um so first just a rant i think this year has been a record in how the number of days that are actually committees meeting i think it's over 130 days i think at least the ones that i should be attending or should be following and i find that uh an incredible burden and i'm delighted to hear that the member states also consider that a burden with all that and with your tool of budgetary constraints which you always have i think you should take this as a as a wonderful lob to you which you can now smash into the court by um seriously discussing ways of making this procedure more effective and um anybody who's attended any of these one week two week meetings has a sense for the time that is actually usefully spent in the time that isn't usefully spent and the way um you know other organizations which equally complex problems are able to have meetings which don't take longer than two days so i would strongly encourage you to take this opportunity when they say you know we have to improve this please do that um that also is connected with the question of communications we can of course all look at the website which is much improved and by the way congratulations to that and see all the wonderful documents but when we read the wonderful documents you don't actually know what's going on in what meeting or where the state is or what's actually happening or whether we are you know two weeks from so they're well written yes they may be well written but um it is um a great compliment that this room is so full and it's a great sadness that it is only so full here because there's so many NGOs here and that are accredited as observers uh and it is so difficult for them to choose the meetings that they should go to and can attend and think about what is worth their while and that's why I'd like to suggest I found your presentation extremely concise and useful and told me a lot of what's going on even in the committees that I'm not in I'd love to see an NGO open day at WIPO where actually it's not just you but the other uh citizens and deputy directors or their uh the staff responsible for committees gives an honest or at least a concise um summary of what's going on and uh therefore gives us all the opportunity to occasionally once a year come all come and take stock of what's happening and my final point on that is now that we have an NGO liaison officer uh it would be great if that institution would have the license to be a little bit more journalistic about what's going on and what's happening so that we all have even better sense of what's going on than through the already incredibly voluminous and and now more comprehensive and more beautiful website thank you okay thank you very much uh I'll take those if I may um so for filai um noted I'd say you know noted your comment about performance rights and difficulties on the internet and I think this is joins the comments that I made a little earlier about the dialogue that we need to explore what the impact of the changing technologies and business environment are on you know uh cultural creators uh and so noted and broadcasting again I can only say noted you know your your view of the scope that the broadcasting treaty should have uh and obviously there are some member states that are inclined to your view absolutely about this but I'm not sure with that we're going to come out with such a uh such a a um big scope for the treaty let's see from the next meeting how we go uh to François Couchot thank you very much for the Madrid system comment and this will continue to be a major priority and I think our strategic plan is looking like being a three-year plan actually for uh so I hope that you will progressively see improvements in the quality of the service over that time and Ahmed uh yes very much noted the uh intellectual property and human rights I did have occasion to address the question uh I think last year on nilson mandela day um in the human rights council and I do see the growing interest in this perspective and looking at things from this point of view uh on the IGC what's the way forward well for uh health and environment look I think um that basically we are getting to the stage where we have exhausted the technical discussions and what we need is a political discussion I think we now need to get political engagement uh because that's the only way in which we will be able to get over the uh technical discussions and move the this forward so it's very complex I'm not sure what the right answer is um and to Jens from the IPA on the number of meetings thank you for this I think yeah this is obviously a growing consensus now that there are too many meetings a lot of people focus on uh time and meeting management as as part of the solution I must say that that of course you know we can make uh improvements there but I don't think that's the real problem I think uh that perhaps we have got ourselves into a situation with standing committees in which we feel that because they're standing they have to meet uh and uh we should remember in my view that they are normative committees and I think if they don't have a normative agenda there's no point in the meeting because we can have a much richer conference you don't need a credited governmental delegates for a conference for a discussion a conference or a discussion can be much more open if they're not in negotiating mode so uh I think if I may say if I may put my neck out and say one of the problems with the standing committee on patents is it doesn't have a normative agenda you know uh the discussion on health and and public health and intellectual property is a pre-normative discussion it's an exploratory discussion in which uh we're looking for information we're looking for positions and so on so and that a better environment for that might be a conference in a more efficient way of communicating information and and position so I think part of the answer is uh moving the programming responsibility up to a higher level so that committees get instructions please do this you know because at a higher level they have taken decisions about what the agendas are rather than having a committee which in the worst manifestation meets and you know uh it concludes its meeting at 1am on Saturday morning without having agreed its agenda you know so if it doesn't have an agenda why should it meet uh and on communications well I can only sympathize with what you say and say that it's a I think it's a massive problem you know uh a massive problem because we're for all international organizations and some are better than others but we're facing a situation in which I don't think anyone under 30 reads any document in the UN system producing the oh why would they you know it's just not the what they're used to is they don't that's not how they receive information so we really and soon that'll be under 40 and under 50 and under 60 and then no one will be reading anything so uh we need to I think uh really you know it's a big problem because uh if you want us to engage which we are doing with social media and other forms of more succinct and uh um uh let's say um I'm trying to find a euphemism for honest uh which was the word that you used uh but a more uh direct way of communicating information then we are going to have to think about the role of an international civil service and what we can do uh and what we can say um now I'm sure we can improve you know it's not as dramatic as that that we're completely locked into a 50 page you know evasive document uh we're not uh we can find ways of communicating information more directly and and better uh but we always have to be a bit careful that we respect the fact that we are a secretariat and not the member states it's a it's a big problem okay any other um questions or we're nearly there I think Dominique please uh thank you uh Francis actually this is not a question but really uh since I guess we're getting to the end of of this meeting um I really want it on behalf of of my organization and and I guess hopefully uh many of those who are around the stable express uh token of appreciation for all the terrible amount of work that you've done for uh for all of us uh during your mandate and the the tasks that you uh you've accomplished so well um during that time um you have been able to achieve very very substantial outcomes uh in a very difficult political economic situation around the world and really to move Waipo up to uh higher grounds on a different level with a lot of vision much transparency at least as much as um was possible and certainly uh a very inspired uh uh and inspirational leadership uh together with your secretariat of course and just to say how much we look forward to uh continuing this good work with you during your next mandate thank you thank you great thank you so thank you very much uh Dominique for your kind words and thanks to everyone for coming and certainly we'll take on board all of your suggestions in one way or another and uh including suggestions about remote participation about our meetings and about our communications uh and thanks once again


Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy and it's time for another UA released one week later than expected. I'm watching you Jeremy, I expect big things. To bring us back to an old group of subclasses donning a new coat of paint in the form of the Phantom Rogue replacing the Revived Rogue, the Genie Warlock losing its noble status, and the Order of Scribes Wizard, which exists because the design team took one look at the Artificer subclass and decided that no, we can't have nice things. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like Unearthed Arcanas are simply propaganda that give false hope to the hopeless, then feel free to play your games however you want, but with that out of the way, let's begin. So, starting out, we got the Phantom Rogue, a sneaky boy that embraced the edge and became one with the Dark Side, granting them necromanic powers that helped them teach other people about the Dark Side by means of stabbing them over and over and over and over and over and over and over. As a Phantom, you can summon the spirit of a ghost to teach you how to be good at a skill or a tool. You can cause the spirits to scream at people when you deal damage to deal more psychic damage to the second person. You can absorb someone's soul into a tiny trinket that you can then use to ask them where they left the TV remote. You can walk through walls, disappear, and fly, and eventually you can get your ghost to scream at more people like it's a quarantine and they need to get their hair done. As is going to become a staple of these subclasses, the Phantom Rogue is almost good to go, but it's got just a little bit more going to get to. I like the whales from the grave, although I think it's weird that it scales off of proficiency bonus, a belief that, again, you're going to see a lot of in this UI. And the only real change that I would make ability-wise is that I would swap out the ability to turn into a ghost with the extra damage ability because not only is getting a bit more extra damage at 17th level sort of underwhelming, but being able to be much more unique than the other guys is something that you should not be able to accomplish so early into the game as 13th level. Destroying the DMs dungeons by bypassing all of the walls should be the reward for a long campaign, not the mid-level checkpoint, lest we find more DMs that want to go ghost. Moving on, the Genie Warlock has apparently done some unscrupulous things since the last UA, seeing as it is no longer a noble and it can often be found living out of a cardboard genie lamp. In a pleasant surprise, the noble genie's abilities change depending on what flavor of genie you want to have, giving you a universal subclass spell, as well as one that is tied to your genie specifically. You also gain a new hat trick in the form of taking your genie repository and using it as a makeshift hotel room, which means that you can suck yourself up into it and chill out for an hour. The vessel can break now though, so be careful. Beyond that, you get extra damage based on your proficiency, with the type being tied to your gin, you get resistance to your gin's type, you fly now, you can bring your friends into your vessel to show off your new place, and while they're in there, they can spend 10 minutes to gain the benefits of a short rest and heal a little bit. And your final ability lets you use a very limited wish to freely cast any spell of six level or lower, but then you can't use it again for another 1d4 long rests. I think I'm always going to miss the noble version of the genie that would tether itself to an ally and force them to never have a friend like me, but as far as the version that we've got now, I actually like it. I think that the flying should be restricted to a hover just because six level free-flying is a recipe for disaster, and if you want to make the ritual to get a new vessel harder to do so that players don't just turtle inside of their decorative lamp whenever they're in trouble, that's fine too. Besides that, the genie warlock is one of the subclasses that I am most excited to see when the next splat book arrives. And finally, we've got the Order of the Scribes, a subclass that abandoned the wizard archetype naming convention and decided to go its own route, a route that inadvertently ended up stealing a lot more from the sorcerer's gimmick than it probably meant to, but it's okay because it has a letter from the doctor that says it can. When you begin your tenure as a member of the School of the Order of the Scribe, you gain a magic marker with disappearing ink that you can use to write down spells in half the time, and you get an awakened spellbook, which is a spellbook that is not actually awakened as far as D&D term goes, but you can still use it as a spellcasting focus, which makes me wonder why wizards couldn't just do that anyway. You can also use it to change the damage type of your spells, you can cast a single ritual spell using its normal speed instead of its ritual speed, effectively giving you a free spell, and beyond that, the Order of Writing shit down on paper can create a spell scroll that only they can read, and while it can only hold a spell at the first or second level, that spell immediately gets bumped up one level, meaning that the artisanal wizard basically gets another free second or third level spell slot. You are also adept at writing spell scrolls, a skill that will be swiftly forgotten about just as quickly as the alchemist's ability to craft potions. Moving on, the wizard can finally make use of the awakened part of their awakened spellbook, letting them cast out a tiny specter of the spellbook's psyche that will fly around and let you cast spells through it.  So, while the other subclasses are pretty much right on the money, requiring only a few tweaks here or there, the Scribblenauts wizard is also right on the money if the money was made out of paper and would unfortunately not be legal tender. This class is all kinds of jumbled up. It wants to be a papers please type wizard, but it also wants a special fun time awakened spellbook friend, and the way that the archetype goes about presenting both of these concepts seems sort of backwards. If you want to have an awakened spellbook, then you have to present that concept right up front. Or else, it's not an awakened spellbook. It's a, my alarm went off a half an hour ago, but can I please have 5 more minutes bomb spellbook? If I were to fix this up, I'd take the spectral buddy feature and put it right at the beginning of the subclass, then take the ritual spell and damage type swap abilities, push them to 6th level, push the current 6th level ability to 10th level, and call it a day. Never mind the fact that being able to swap out damage types and regenerate spells should be a sorcerer thing, but they at least shouldn't be things that you get right out the gate. Also, with the extremely interesting burn spells to not die ability, the only thing that I would change is that I would let you come back immediately instead of having to wait a full minute, since you already have to destroy anywhere between 3 to 18 levels worth of spells, and those spells can only be returned to you by using Wish to want them back. Overall, I think that the Phantom and the Genie are good refocuses of their earlier subclass counterparts, but the Order of the Papyrus is going to have to take a lot more writing classes before it's ready to be a published author. Buuuut then about do it! I hope you enjoyed this video, be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, click on my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can continue to sport trees by using online resources instead of wasting as much paper as this new wizard subclass. But yeah, Davie out!


So my name is Alim Kamisa. I work at Element Finance. I'm a product manager. Element Finance is a protocol, a DeFi protocol for fixed and variable yields and I'm really excited to be here today to talk to you about product development in DeFi and let's get started. So first off, I kind of wanted a level set on what does a product manager do and you know, there's lots of different definitions. And oftentimes people will think they do one thing or another. Oftentimes a PM does a lot of things. It's everything. So the core area of responsibility is shaping the product, shipping the product, measuring product success. And these are things I'm going to kind of loosely talk about throughout the presentation. But synchronizing the team is really important. The product person will interface with the rest of the team, kind of align on timelines, hash out kind of product requirements and ensure everyone is on the same page and kind of working in the same direction. So I want to talk about building the product roadmap and how I want to kind of place a little bit of emphasis on R&D and how that's really important to kind of creating new product opportunities. So DeFi research teams really need to focus, sorry, DeFi teams really need to focus on research and development in order to succeed in the space. They got to commit to experimentation. It's not just about rehashing existing solutions and it's important to take an additive approach where you're building new DeFi primitives and contributing those primitives to the open source DeFi ecosystem. And at the same time you're leveraging DeFi Lego pieces and this again fits within the whole, you know, idea or ethos of composability within the DeFi space. So having a pipeline of research projects is really important. It could really guide the evolution of the product or DAP you're working on within the DeFi space and it could potentially lead to entirely new products. And so with that, you know, the the pipeline of research projects can really form the basis of the R&D roadmap and the R&D roadmap is a critical input, a very important input into the product roadmap. Mind you, it's not the only input into the product roadmap. There's lots of other things, but it is really important. I want to talk about how do we structure the product roadmap or lay it out because oftentimes we think about it from a timing perspective by month, by quarter. I think the now next later approach works really really well, especially in the fast-paced environment of DeFi or for teams that are working on new product development you know, V1 of a protocol where there's a lot of uncertainty and things are changing really fast. So everything you're working on in flight is kind of in the now bucket, everything that's coming up is a next and anything that is low priority kind of gets shifted into the later bucket. This kind of gives DeFi teams the ability to not be kind of handcuffed to specific timelines when you're developing a V1 and kind of, you know, develop it right and not necessarily take the shortcuts. And it just gives them the ability to have more flexibility in terms of how they're developing and timelines overall. So this is actually one of my favorite sections of their presentation, and I want to get into you know, how do we find a process, a product development process that works for for your team? I have to say that I'm going to caveat this with there are lots of nuances across different teams, team size, culture. If you're working on a DeFi protocol versus a DAPT that's being built on top of a protocol, all of these things kind of play into the specific custom product process that you should develop for your team. So this is something that's worked really well for Element Finance and with that we are still evolving the process as we should be to suit our needs as we kind of evolve as a team. So stage zero is kind of the concept vision stage and this is where our smart contract leads and our founders, both of our founders are previous ETH2 researchers and come from a very intensive research background. So they'll usually kind of come up with a new feature or something new, whether it's a new product concept altogether. And then the smart contract team leads will usually try to crystallize that with our founders. And then in stage one, the formative stage will have our smart contract teams, our front-end teams, product and design kind of working together to really hash out and understand the core functionality. And then in stage two, the smart contract team usually takes a little bit of a step back and they take on a little bit more of a consultative role and our front-end design teams and our product teams will kind of do the scoping and prototyping. So hashing out the UIUX, the requirements and of course also kind of creating the project plan for what's to come. And then in stage three, we get into our development sprints. Many of you, if you work on product teams today, sprints can be typically two weeks, but it could be a week, it could be a month, it really depends on the team. And this is where we get into the execution cycle. Important to note that we're actually running two sprints in parallel.  And then the front-end team is, excuse me, the front-end team is working with product and design to kind of execute the development of the UI and the UX. And of course we're doing a lot of internal and external stakeholder feedback throughout that entire process to ensure we're validating assumptions. So when we get into the sprint cycle, one thing that's really, really difficult for product teams to do, this is something I found personally very difficult to do, is agile estimation. So estimating the work effort that goes into your tasks. And that's really important to velocity. And velocity is really important to understand, like how is the team performing? Are they able to deliver on time? Are they able to complete all of the tasks in the sprint on time? Poor task estimation often leads to suboptimal velocity and timeline slipping. So I got to give a shout out to my front-end team. I don't know if I have any of them here today, but shout out to them. Because we came up with this really interesting framework for estimation that I think works really well. So we kind of look at time, rough estimate of the time to complete that user story or if it's broken down into the development tasks, we look at collaboration cost. And I think this might be something you might be new to many of you. The level of collaboration with other teams, for example, if my design team needs to provide new components, if there's a lot of, you know, if the product requirements are really intensive and require a ton of time and require lots of working sessions, all of those things are going to take away development time, and that needs to be factored in. So that's part of the collaboration cost. The confidence is really a score for the confidence on the time estimate, which also includes complexity and the collaboration cost. And the key takeaway here is you want to avoid your timelines from blowing up by having too many high collab and too many low confidence scoring tasks in the same sprint. That's going to allow the development team to have enough time to be able to execute the tasks without getting bogged down on a lot of working sessions and too many meetings and stuff like that. I don't know if I have enough time for simulation modeling, so I'm going to skip this, but this is a topic that's very near and dear to my heart. So if you have questions, we can address them a little bit later. But I'll just quickly touch on tools like Catcat, Gauntlet, Token Spice, all of these things I do encourage everyone to kind of take a look at and explore on their own. Product Market Fit and KPIs, really important. This is something my team has been spending a lot of time on lately. And what's the common metric across DeFi right now, right? It's TVL, total value locked, right? It's a good metric. Is it a great metric? I don't think so. It's a good metric when it's taken in concert with other metrics. Alone, I don't think it's sufficient to give you a good idea of Product Market Fit. So TVL is not really sticky. Traders often look for the best yields across DeFi, so the loyalty is fickle. And that can cause a lot of volatility in the TVL. TVL is also subject to a lot of market cyclicality, bull, bear. And it's just not a good long-term metric to measure long-term sustainability, health, and success of a protocol. So again, it's not a bad metric, but it should be taken alongside other key metrics, which I'll touch on very quickly. Ecosystem engagement metrics are crucial. Understanding community engagement and frequency, developer activity, are there other developers building on top of your protocol? Integrations, are there other protocols integrating with your protocol? Those are really strong indicators of Product Market Fit. And the number of unique token holders. So if the token distribution is really high and you have a very decentralized token economy, you might have more participation in governance, and you just have more participation in the protocol, that's also a really good sign as well. Product engagement metrics, like daily active users or daily active addresses, turn and retention metrics, user actions, like in a DeFi protocol, you often have users depositing, trading, redeeming, and other types of metrics are really important. I'm going to skip over this for time, because I'm down to a minute and a half, but how do we measure some of these metrics? It's really important. So first of all, you may not know this or maybe you do, but a lot of DeFi projects out there, like Maker, Aave, Uniswap, DYDX, are collecting user data. Mind you, most of them have the privacy flag turned on, which is something you can do in Google Analytics and other tools like Mixpanel. But they are collecting user data. It's anonymized data. It's really important for informing product decisions, app and protocol evolution, and optimizing marketing efforts as well. What's really important is that you've integrated consent management. This fits within the ethos of Web 3, where users have full control over their data. If they want to opt out of anonymous data collection, you need to give them that opportunity to do that. Then open source tooling is better than closed source, of course. The tech stack that I've outlined here is a typical product marketing analytics tech stack that we could use that includes all open source tools. I'm happy to chat about that a little bit more later, because I know I'm just down to a couple seconds. But yeah, feel free to follow me on Twitter, elements underscore phi on Twitter as well. I'll have a blog post coming out, which will be very comprehensive and cover all of this in much, much more detail. So stay tuned for that as well. Happy to take any questions if we have any time.