The new director general of WIPO, Mr Francis Gurry of Australia has mentioned, inter alia, the volume of work facing many patent offices as a big challenge.
“The functional consequence of this trend is that the system is becoming a victim of its own success” with patent offices “choking on demand and struggling to perform in a manner that is timely enough to be responsive to the needs of the economy,” he told the Assembly in Geneva. He has mentioned that right now there are 3.5 million unexamined patent applications in the world while last year only 1.7 million patent applications were filed.
His own preference goes for a multilateral solution based on the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) rather than on initiatives involving a limited number of jurisdictions. I assume he is targeting recent US initiatives.
It is interesting to see that while so many detractors are fighting against IP rights and more precisely patents, the figures are there and the patent system is a robust system integrated with the economy. This is a global trend, not limited to a jurisdiction. As clearly indicated by Mr Gurry "the economic value of innovation has increased and, with it, the desire to acquire property rights over the frontiers of knowledge. "
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