Two IPs In A Pod
Brilliant inventions, fresh product designs, iconic brand names and artistic creativity are not only the building blocks of successful business - they deliver a better world for us all. But these valuable forms of intellectual property must be protected in order to flourish. We are the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys - the UK's largest intellectual property organisation. Our hosts Lee Davies and Gwilym Roberts chat with entrepreneurs, creatives, patent attorneys and the occasional judge about how patents, trade marks, designs and copyright can improve our lives and solve problems for humanity.
Two IPs In A Pod
With... Lisa Jorgenson of WIPO
This week Lee and Gwilym are joined by Lisa Jorgenson of WIPO as she shares her incredible career journey from sales, to IP litigation, to her current role at WIPO. Join the Peas as they chat with Lisa about WIPO's collaborative efforts to advance intellectual property on a global scale, the structure and functions of WIPO, and the role of the PCT in shaping patent strategies. Lisa also describes the the global initiatives led by WIPO, especially those aimed at supporting developing countries and empowering women and minorities in the IP field.
So, Gwilym, when was the last time that we did a podcast? Can you remember?
Speaker 2:Not long ago Not long ago, but it was between these two podcasts you went through huge physical danger.
Speaker 1:Oh, I played football. I played football. Yeah, we played in the SIPA Informals that's the SIPA students for those who don't know, sipa intimately Football tournament. There were 17 teams, big old turnout, so I think we had about 140 people there and we came last I turned up. I offered to play in goal because, like when I was younger, it was where everyone used to put me because it was least damage done. So I offered to play in goal.
Speaker 1:And I was told no, we've got a goalkeeper. And then I turned up and was immediately said are you still okay to play a goal? I was like, yeah, I've not got long trousers, I've not got long shirt sleeves. Have you ever dived?
Speaker 2:Have you ever dived on AstroTurf? No, no, I gather it was a bit spiky, isn't it?
Speaker 1:You come up like like big carpet burns. I was absolutely covered in carpet burns, so not to be recommended, I think. But no, an enjoyable time was had by all, I think.
Speaker 2:We yeah, my firm sent two teams. I checked in. Our B team beat you, oh thanks, and it was a mixed game, of course, and our female striker put three past your goalie. Don't know who it was that might have been me. No, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:No, I wasn't in goal at that time. I'd come back to go on pitch. That was Yemi yeah. Yeah, I didn't get the name of your female striker, but she did entirely sound me like a lame duck. She did this nifty little manoeuvre thing with her feet and I just didn't know where I was. I was totally confused. I fell over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my response. My own feet start moving in sympathy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was exactly that. It was like trying to mirror the movements. Bang down, I went, but no, we did have a good time, but we did get soundly beaten by everybody who played us.
Speaker 2:But was it fun Because it's about taking part everybody who played us.
Speaker 1:But was it fun Because it's about taking part, and I played every single minute. I was on pitch for every minute. How cool is that, seeing as I was the oldest person there?
Speaker 2:Oh, you'd be pleased then, because my colleague says no, I don't think we played against Lee, because there were no old blokes on the team.
Speaker 1:Look at you, I'll take that. I'll take that. No, there was very much an old bloke on the team but, to be fair, I still move reasonably fast for an old bloke.
Speaker 2:It's those glutes. We talked about that last podcast. Those glutes, definitely glutes. Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod and you are listening to a podcast on intellectual property brought to you by the Chartered Institute of Patent Determination.
Speaker 1:So, ok, second podcast. Today We've gotisa jorgensen returning to the podcast for us, um, because last time we we recorded with lisa and we had a bit of a sound issue and we could never, ever get it um broadcast quality. So this is um, this is really exciting for us, um, we love it when a guest comes back, even especially lisa, when they didn't actually make it on in the first place.
Speaker 3:Well, welcome to the podcast thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a pleasure, it's a real pleasure. So where to start off, gwilym? Where do we want to go first with questions for Lisa?
Speaker 2:Well, why don't we get Lisa, if you would care to introduce yourself and tell us a little about your history and background, how you got to WIPO?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I'd be pleased to. So let me just start with my work history, because I think that will sort of demonstrate how I got to WIPO. I actually started out in a whole nother career of sales for Westinghouse and electrical equipment to the nuclear power industry Oxymoron since I have a science background and not an electrical background. But it worked and I had a great time and I went to law school at night. From there I went down to that was in Chicago. From there I went down to Dallas, texas, and started working for a couple of years as an IP litigator, but after that I went in-house to ST Microelectronics, a semiconductor company, where I spent the next 25 years Wow yeah. And in fact I'm now living in Geneva and the story that brings those two together is the headquarters of the company I work for is right down the street from where I live ST Micro.
Speaker 3:And after ST I decided to see what other things I might like to do and I went to an NGO in Washington DC for about five and a half years. That was AIPLA, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and from there, right in the middle of COVID, I decided to leave AIPLA and come over to WIPO. So I moved to. My husband and I moved over here during COVID, which was unique in and of itself because we got off the plane and went straight into quarantine and then had to try to find a place to live. So that was a unique experience in and of itself.
Speaker 3:But I really enjoyed my time at different from ST, but at AIPLA, where I started to get more involved with outreach to members of an organization and felt that coming to WIPO would be sort of an enhancement of that and my ability to work with both stakeholders and member states would be just a great sort of turn in my career. And it's turned out to be just that. I have loved every minute of being at WIPO. It's turned out to be just that. I have loved every minute of being at WIPO. I'm in charge of one of the eight sectors at the patent and technology sector, which is the sector that brings in the most revenue. About 76% of WIPO's income comes in through the PCT. So that's the background and how I got to WIPO.
Speaker 1:Can I just dwell momentarily on the AIPLA five and a half years Because I've. So we met Vincent Garlick back in back in back at Inter Gwilym and I did some podcasts there, so I had the chance to speak to Vincent about his experience of AIPLA. And it was so nice to speak to someone else who's running a largely voluntary membership association. How did you find your time working with a bunch of volunteers?
Speaker 3:Actually it was amazing because as a volunteer, they all wanted to really try to do the most that they could for AIPLA, for the various programs, the committees running the committees trying to have an influence and an impact in the various IP areas. And it's just, you know, either that or the volunteers would also find ways to network to also help to enhance their own careers.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, I think that really helped out a lot too for people being, you know, any of these NGO type organizations. Of course I still believe AIPLA is one of the best organizations. Of course I still believe AIPLA is one of the best and, you know, it really does give people an opportunity to meet, to network, to benchmark and also to have a real influence and impact in the IP areas that they're most interested in.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We enjoy our relationship with AIPLA. Our American colleagues were over just a few weeks back and it's just such an amazing few days. Obviously, we've got lots of shared interests, particularly around substantive pattern or harmonization and grace period and all of those kinds of conversations that are really live at the moment that maybe we might we might perhaps touch on in the podcast, and I think we're both learning from one another. I think we learned that at Inter, didn't we? That there's lots we can take from each other. I think we're probably both the premier IP professional bodies in the world. That's how I would capture it.
Speaker 2:That's nicely put, lee. I think, if I may, about the history as well, is that it's pretty unique that you've worked in private practice in-house non-governmental, then governmental. I mean, I don't think there are many other things you can do in our world, is there?
Speaker 3:I don't know if that's positive or negative, but yes, that's true. Yeah, I actually found it to be just sort of a progression at each phase and I found coming to WIPO, having that corporate background in the PCT, was really beneficial because in many ways you know, wipo is very typical UN organization the technical side of the UN organization, and that part's been a big learning curve for me. But in another way, wipo, or at least in the PCT, is very much like a corporation. You have to understand finances, you have to understand HR issues, union issues, how to run an organization, efficiencies and operations et cetera. So I think my corporate background probably was very helpful for me in the role that I'm in now.
Speaker 2:That's interesting and also, I guess, looking out you kind of work, your constituents at WIPO are people who have patents, people who are affected by patents and people who help them get patents, and again I guess you've got a little insight into what they're all thinking. So presumably you know your customer base very well as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's really true. I think, from the standpoint of whether you're an individual inventor or an SME or a larger, small corporation, I think I do have that background to say in a couple or a variety of different areas, for example in why would you need a patent in the first place, what's it going to do, how are you going to benefit from that, to patent strategies, to IP financing, ip licensing, and how does the PCT then fit into all of that? So I think I think that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe moving on a little bit to the PCT side of of things or the wiper side of things, sorry, um, certainly, in my world of patent attorney, patent practitioner, you hear wiper. You basically think, certainly as a patent attorney, you think pct, but you've already mentioned that you're, you know you're one of eight sections, um and pct and tech. Um, I think what you you said is the bit that, uh, patents and tech is a bit that that you touch on um, but what are the other areas? Very quickly, in broad brush, Sure.
Speaker 3:So there's really eight sectors and you can just sort of view them as business units. So Darren Tang, our director general, is like the CEO of the corporation. He's our director general and under him are four deputy director generals and four assistant director generals. So we have in those eight sectors we have the two registries, the PCT, and then the brands and design, which covers the Madrid and Hague, so trademarks and designs. We have the copyright sector, which manages the copyright law and information.
Speaker 3:We have what we call RNDS, which is regional and national development sector, which is the sort of the go between the ones that manage the relationship between member states and WIPO. And they also have WIPO Academy, which is the largest IP offerings for learning anywhere in the world, and they do just everything from soup to nuts. So it's beginning to end for anybody in their career or anybody that's just looking for information on IP. Then we have what we call infrastructure and platforms, which is the group that handles the tools that are used between IPOs, the IP offices around the world and WIPO, among other things. Then we have global challenges and partnerships.
Speaker 3:That's the group that manages the relationship between WIPO and all those NGOs like AIPLA and SIPA, but also manages the relationship between WIPO and all those NGOs like AIPLA and SEPA, but also manages the relationship between WIPO and the big UN in New York, wto, who and all the other bodies like those. We have our IP and innovation ecosystem sector which manages the or, that's the house for our chief economist and all of his staff IP for business, ip for innovators, the arbitration mediation center, the judicial institute they're all housed in that sector. And then of course you have the administrative and management part of the organization which has the finance, the IT, the premises, procurement, security, etc. So those are the eight sectors and Darren has his own sort of front office staff which is our news and media team, things like HR, our diplomatic team, diplomatic corps team. He also has like IOD, so the internal oversight division, those ethics office, those kinds of things report up to him and everything else is spread through those eight sectors huge operation.
Speaker 2:Roughly how many people if you go in the whole organization it's about 1400.
Speaker 3:I think 14 to 1500 oh, that's my thought.
Speaker 2:I think epo, of course, is overwhelmed with examiners. You don't have the examiner burden, do you?
Speaker 3:that's so we have the, we have the logistics examiners, the formalities examiners, but it's they're probably around 200 of those out of the 1500. So, nothing on the scale of a USPTO or EPO, etc.
Speaker 2:It's about 200 people, so they work hard because there's a lot of PCT filing numbers just forever growing. I think that's right, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yes, last year, 2023, was a slight dip between 2022 to 2023, about one and a half percent or so in both filings and income. I think we had roughly 200 and I can't remember 275,000 filings last year and the income was roughly around 370, 375 million and that was down. Each of them were down about roughly around one and a half percent. We're hoping or not hoping. We're looking at statistics now and thinking that there's the possibility for a slight increase in second half of this year. We did see a slight downturn in the first half, but we're seeing the signs for a slight increase for the second half. That would bring us back maybe roughly about the same as 2023. And then, year after year after that, we're thinking that we will again start to see some improvement in the numbers, both in filings and in revenue, but it won't be dramatic. It'll be slight increases. We're hoping year over year.
Speaker 2:It's actually quite unusual to hear a dip in filings. Patents tend to go up and up. Doing the maths, I guess that means there was a dip in priority filings 21, 22. So is there maybe a pandemic-ish reason behind that?
Speaker 3:Well, it's the post-pandemic, because our patent application filings are the ones that are done in real time, so not from a year or two ago, where you're looking at the 12-month period, the 18-month period. So we saw a dip in 2023. We did not see that dip in 2022. We did see it still an increase, albeit a smaller increase than what we had anticipated, but we did see that increase in 2022, slight decrease in 2023 and we're believing right now that it's probably going to be roughly a break even over 2023 for the end of this year which is okay as well.
Speaker 2:It's good to hear. I think there was always going to be that slight um, that slight impact of a lot of people not being able to do their day job in quite the same way. So it kind of makes sense, I think. The other kind of question, that so we're going to go to the pct in particular, what are the growth plans for it? We've got, you've got 140 something countries. I always lose. I can never keep up.
Speaker 3:But 157 pct members, wow, the 193 members of WIPO. And yes, we have a number of things that we're working on. Really, it boils down to sort of three buckets of things the outreach to our stakeholders, customer service and customer experience, and staff development. If we look at PCT as a whole, we have several divisions or multiple divisions. So in the PCT we have the services department, so we have the operations team and in that team we are looking at ensuring that we are as efficient as possible and where you can't make your way out of a downturn by constantly reducing costs but you still have to look at the overall picture of costs and efficiency and still maintain the staff that we have. So what we've done is moved from an application-driven process to an applicant driven process and we have worked for the last almost a year and a half now at training all of our operations examiners on a number of different areas where they can be the focal point to answer questions from the stakeholders, versus having to move them over to a different group to handle the basic questions on patent application filings and issues. They've also done things like now that they have, for example, maybe one or two examiners may have a large corporation or a number of corporations that are big filers. They can look and say are we seeing the same problems with them over and over again? How can we reach out to them, explain to them what we're seeing and find a way to resolve it? So the team inside at WIPO doesn't need to continuously resolve those kinds of issues. We resolve them once and for all with the stakeholder and it makes the whole process a lot more efficient. So we did two pilot teams on this. We just finished the pilot teams in the sense of doing an internal survey to see how the staff felt about it, and we did an external survey with a number of our stakeholders to be sure that they felt that this was going to be beneficial to them. Both came back very positive. So we now turned those two pilot teams into regular operations teams and we had 10 of those overall. So we did two pilots. So there's eight remaining teams. We will do probably four in next year and four the remaining four the year after. And a lot of our other divisions within the PCT are really helping out to make sure that these operators operations examiners are really fully trained up to speed. We're getting them upskilled. They've seemed to really like the ability to have a chance for promotion in the kind of work they're doing, as well as even promotion in job grades, and it's just worked out really, really well for us. So that's operations.
Speaker 3:Darren, our director general had decided to move all of IT inside WIPO into one organization under one umbrella, which I think was one of the best decisions he could have made, but it did raise some issues. So we had our own PCT IT team and they were dedicated to the PCT IT team and they were dedicated to the PCT. So of course people are saying but if they go over to a different organization, are we still going to get the same support that we have always enjoyed? And the answer is it's proven to be yes, we are getting the same support.
Speaker 3:What we actually did was we split up into two pieces. We sent all of the real developers, type IT, into the big IT group and we sent the business development team from IT back into PCT, which is the group that reaches out to the stakeholders to say what is it that you need from us? How do we work better together? And stakeholders in this case could be primarily IPOs, the IP offices, or in some cases, could be NGOs or could be stakeholders, but a lot of the work is with the IP offices to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our clients basically. So I think that actually worked out really well to split these up into sort of two pieces. Part of it stayed with PCT, part of it went with IT, and I can keep going. If you don't have any questions, at the moment I'll just keep going through the divisions, but let me stop there for a moment. See if you have any questions questions.
Speaker 2:I'd question the comments actually, or vice versa, um, the. So getting the stakeholders early makes a lot of sense. Engaging with them, as you say, as an applicant rather than as thinking of it as an application, makes tons of sense, especially as I guess you know you guys are first. You're the very start of the pipeline of the patent process, so you want to be catching errors and helping people out and getting best practices as early as possible. And I think I mean the pct.
Speaker 2:Having studied it a few years ago now, I do remember it was legendarily tricky trying to work out which receiving office to use and making up making yourself an inventor or whatever the kind of weird tricks that people used to have to make sure that you could do it. I always find it quite perplexing. So help is really useful to people. So thank you on behalf of just about anybody who's dealt with the pct system. Simple prospect trying to try to bring 157 points of view together always going to be a bit tricky. I can see that. Um, and also, I think, lee, we've seen this as well that seeper. I think upskilling and moving from the idea of an administrator to the idea, effectively, of a paralegal or an ip support function is something that just seems to be popular wherever you see it isn't it, I think, absolutely good?
Speaker 1:I think, I mean, in part, it's a response, isn't it, to the way the world just moves so quickly and you and you need a kind of broad base of skills across as as many as you can in your teams. So, um, I think, I think we're only going to see more and more of this sort of development, um, and also, of course, we're getting ai, aren't we? We're going to get ai.
Speaker 2:That's going to, um, significantly change, um, what the professional world looks like, so that I think, yeah, I think, you are going to see this sort of professional transformation but it's good because at least, as you say, it brings enthusiasm, it brings passion, it makes people excited about the future, and you need to know where you're going next, I think. So that sounds really important.
Speaker 3:It is, and I think for the staff that that has have been going through the pilot team upskilling. I think they've just been thrilled with their opportunities and it has really given them kind of a a lease on their look on their work for WIPO and really kind of excited them again, and I think that's just really positive for everybody. You know, willem, you raised an issue about the ability to understand the PCT process, and one of the things that we've also been working on is in a different division, for One of the things that we've also been working on is in a different division, for you probably know Matt Bryan, yeah, and Matt's in charge of our legal and user resource division. In that division he's been working really hard at things like e-application guide, the newsletter, making sure that it is out there for the people who really need it with the information that they really need. So we're also working on the other side of it.
Speaker 3:In fact, it's Matt's team that has really done a lot of the training of the examiners on the technical side, the legal, technical side of what they're doing. We've also brought in experts to teach people how to talk to our clients, even going that far with soft skills. So we're doing a lot of work in that area as well. Then we also have a lot of outreach that we're doing, both PCT and EPCT, to the IP offices and the stakeholders. We're really enhancing our outreach capabilities, putting more resources into the team that is managing that, which is our international cooperation division, and we're looking at this, trying to look at this very holistically, because every part of PCT affects another part of the PCT and there's so many divisions and these people know each other so well that it makes it easier to do a lot of cross-division and cross-sectoral work with them, to get collaboration across the PCT house to make that work.
Speaker 2:You mentioned there about the interrelatedness of the PCT and I think complexity I don't want to make it sound impossible is actually very manipulable. Most of the time it's just when you get a weird fact set it can catch you out. And, of course, the PCT is a holding pattern For those less versed in the system. Listening in the PCT is kind of a holding pattern or kind of what I call international patent pending before your patent application goes into national, regional phase, as we obviously all know, but incredibly important place, to put it. As a result. Um, as you say, you've mostly got administrative examiners, but there's a lot of law and substantive law sitting behind the pct and, as lee mentions, there's a lot going on. For example, there's always conversations about substantive patent law harmonization. Are there any big legal changes coming via the PCT that we should be looking out for?
Speaker 3:I don't know if I would say there's big changes as much as new things that we're working on. Of course, we have the Patent and Technology Law Division, which is different than the PCT, and in that division that is where we have our SCP, which is our Standing Committee on the Law of Patents, which would be the place where a lot of the conversations would take place among the member states on things like harmonization, ip and health, areas where all of the member states are saying these are the topics that we need to benchmark, the topics that we need to understand, and in the Patent and Technology Law Department, this is where those conversations would take place. So we just recently came out with our Guide to Trade Secrets and Innovation. I think that was about two weeks ago and that seems to be really valuable. It goes again from soup to nuts. Right, it goes from the very beginning of what is a trade secret to how do you use trade secrets in collaboration with patents for your innovation. We also came out not too long before that with our first WIPO strategic plan for standard essential patents.
Speaker 3:This is where WIPO can play a pretty significant role of being the convener of the conversation. We're not there to tell member states what they should do, but we're there to say here's what's happening in the world, here are the procedures and policies around SEPs, everything from what EU did to what the US is doing, to what China's doing, to venues and FRAND, the free and or fair. No, it's FRAND fair and reasonable, non-discriminatory licensing policies and everything in between. So we're looking at a lot of those kinds of issues through that side of the Patent and Technology Law Department. On the other side of that same division are the, not the treaty work that's done in the same section, but in the other side is the legislative work.
Speaker 3:And we do offer advice to our member states on their national IP policies, the patent policies, whether it's, you know, in the IP office, as a regulation or administrative rules, especially for least developed countries and developing countries where they may not really have a solid plan or a solid set of policies to work from. So we help them get those in place as well. And of course, we have the treaty work, the Patent Law Treaty and the Budapest Treaty, where we work on, you know, making sure that somebody who wants to accede to it. We give them pre-accession support during their time to accede and then post-accession support to say, you know, now that you've signed it, what do you do next? Because a lot of them won't really know what to do next, and so we help them make sure that they can implement something that they just signed up to.
Speaker 2:I think that help and support angle of ypo again, you know we often just think, oh, pct, that's a good way of keeping your patent bending. There's so much more going on and you talked also about um, least developed countries. Um, I was checking out your I think might be your mission statement. You serve the world's innovators and creators, ensuring that their ideas travel safely to the market and improve lives everywhere. Is that a recent mission statement or has that been there for a while?
Speaker 3:It's a 2022 through 2026 mission statement, so it's not recent, but we're constantly referring to it to make sure that we are constantly adhering to it, and I think that we are. Now that we're a couple of years into it, or a year and a half, two years into it, we all do feel like we are able to follow that quite well. But there's so much behind that statement of everything that we do right. I mean, just as an example, in our IP and innovation ecosystem group, as well as a couple other sectors they're working on, how do you support women, entrepreneurs or individuals? How do you support the youth? How do you support SMEs, helping them understand why they even need to consider intellectual property? So it's taking that to the ground, taking IP to the ground for people to understand how IP can help them individually and economically. You know, if you help a woman in a developing country or least developed country understand why trademarks are so important to them, we don't talk about patents and trademarks and designs. We talk about innovation and creativity. And then how do you step them through that process from? They come up with an idea, but then what? How do you decide? Can you get financing? How do you manufacture? How do you take it to market? How do you protect it with IP, like trademarks?
Speaker 3:But that comes later, when we're talking about very instant or the very first instance is to say do you have a business plan? Let us help walk you through every step of the way to commercialization and enforcement. And so it's a whole process and almost all of us around the house are involved in that entire process, from beginning to end in some way. That entire process from beginning to end in some way. Wipo Academy, for example, is there to say, well, we'll, let's say, put together a group, a particular group where they've had to apply. So out of I don't know 50 or 70 women, we might take 20 and say, let's walk you through this over time.
Speaker 3:We don't just come in and say, for two or three days, we teach you what this is all about. We come in and we work with them, and then we stay with them for 12 months and then we say, okay, now we're ready to see what you can do after this time and figure out how to continue the work that you've started. And we come back and we revisit with them at some later point in time, but we mentor them for a significant period of time. What we're looking for are programs like that that are repeatable and sustainable. So if it works in Jordan, does it work in South America? If it works in South America, does it work in Africa, south America, if it works in South America, does it work in Africa? And everyone may need to be tailored in some way to the region or to the group that we're working with next, but it still has to be a baseline program that can be tailored and then repeated and sustained. Those are the kinds of things that we're looking at doing.
Speaker 1:So, Lisa, can I just pick up just to give Gwilym a wee break for a moment, because he's been bombarding you with questions and it's quite nice for me to talk occasionally, Gwilym. So I'm really interested in the EDI angle and at CIPA we've been doing a lot of work around the profession, so how the profession looks in terms of its diversity, how it represents inventors, how it's representative of the inventor community, and I know that you've been doing a huge amount of work around women in inventorship. We touched on some of that there. What can organizations like SEPA, AIPLA? So we represent professionals, but there must be things that we could usefully do to open up the inventor community to more diverse and varied people.
Speaker 3:It's a. It's a really great question, lee. I meanIPO looking at the diversity of women and minorities working in WIPO in the field of IP, versus externally, looking from WIPO outside to say, how do we help women or youth or the underserved understand what it means for IP to help them individually in their own world? How can they benefit economically? You help one woman and she helps her community. If she helps her community, she helps her region. If she helps her region, maybe she can take her product to the market on a worldwide scale. So there's really two aspects to it internal and external. What I think you guys are really good at AIPLA and so many of these other NGOs is helping women in IP understand their career paths or just their development in IP. What I think you're asking is how can you guys help with the IP out to the women who want to use IP? Exactly that, and there are many different kinds of ways. I mean you can collaborate with a WIPO.
Speaker 3:We're always looking for partners to collaborate with, just on a big scale. Example of this is we're collaborating. I'm the champion for IP and gender at WIPO, so some of this runs through my team. It's a small team but we coordinate around the WIPO house with some of these things. But we're working with SheTrades at the ITC. Shetrades has access, I believe, to around 40,000 women in trade, but they didn't originally have an IP module inside all of the training that they do. So we're working with them now to build an IP module for them that they can insert into their own trade training of all these women and it's a huge group. They are so effective in what they do and if you can add the IP to it, then I think women will also benefit from understanding how IP can then help them also economically and then ultimately in trade. But there are a lot of things that organizations like SIPA can do in collaborating with other organizations that are working in this area, like WIPO.
Speaker 1:I think we'd be really interested in doing that. I know Gwilym and I have done a couple of podcasts around EDI and one around. So we have an initiative in the UK called the STEMET, which is Women in Science, technology, engineering and Mathematics, and remember on that podcast we were talking about women generally in science there and not inventorship. But we learned about the leaky pipeline and you get this significant number of women who will start off down the pathway to science and tech careers and then over time for all sorts of reasons that diminishes. Is that the same in inventorship? Is it that women aren't inventing or are they inventing but over time sort of attrition takes them out of the system?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's a catch to that question. I think women do invent. I think, from my own experience, even being in-house in a large corporation, a lot of women don't think that what they've done is an invention. So a lot of this is education. What does it mean to have invented something, to be an innovator or a creator, and then what do you do with that information? Do with that information, and I think it's really about education to help them with the process of understanding how IP can work for them or help them economically. You know, I think there's two aspects to it. One is, again, you know, helping women who want to move into the field, like to be a patent agent or patent attorney. How do you help them come from a STEM background into the field of IP and, again, versus those that are in STEM areas, become the inventors, the innovators, et cetera, and I think they're there. I think what we're finding, though, is a lot of them don't really know about how IP can support them. I think we estimated about 17.5, 17.7% or so of women inventors are on PCT applications. That's pretty low, and I think it only went up slightly from the year before. That was at the end of 2023. And I think part of this is we have to be able to first understand what the data shows, to know exactly what's going on, but then we have to be able to know how to use that data to help us with improving our access to women in these areas or any other underserved group of people in these areas or any other underserved group of people.
Speaker 3:We're doing things here like having our first, given that we've only been working on this for about a year. We're going to have our first global research experts meeting on improving gender and diversity in IP and innovation. We're going to do that this November and our chief economist and his staff will be pulling this together of academics, ipo or IP office other economics, chief economists and their staffs from other major IP offices know what information we need and then how do we gather it. How do we benchmark everybody's best efforts and the best way to go about this so that we can do the research and know how to take the next step forward to reach out to all of these women and the underserved? So we'll have a call for papers on that, I think, this month or early next month, and we're hoping that this will really be a big event. We're hearing a lot around it and it's not just for those academics, it's for anybody that wants to participate or listen in on the work that we're going to be doing.
Speaker 3:The second step is finding partners. You know, if we partnered with SEPA, we partner with SheTrades, we partner with any other NGO or any other IP office, so that we can enhance and multiply all of our efforts together so that we have a greater impact and greater outreach in that area. And then, of course, for us, the third leg of our strategic plan for IP, the IP gap, which is our IP and gender action plan, is on policies that countries like least developing countries, developing countries and even others that are further along but still don't have a lot going on in the women and IP area is what can we do to support them in creating policies at the national level that can help women and inventors or innovators and creators so that they can get into the system and learn what they need to do?
Speaker 1:So I know Gwilym's aching to come in with another question, but just sort of an observation before I close, and that's we've been working quite closely over the last few years with Global Win, so the Global Women Inventors Network headed up by the amazing Bola Olabisi, and I don't know if WIPO's connected there, but I think that would be a really kind of useful connection for you because Bola's doing some amazing stuff around showcasing women inventors we'd be more than happy to have that discussion with you, because we're always looking for ways to to do more and better outreach and have a greater impact let's, let's, follow that one up outside the podcast.
Speaker 2:Good, I'm over to you, mate yeah, it's just one last question around around, kind of the ldc element that you mentioned a couple of times, and more broadly, about the enormous geographical challenge that I'm going to focus on geography, not politics, don't worry. The enormous geographical challenge that you guys face, in the sense that you've got this um again, this mission statement about you know serving the world's innovators and creators. But innovators and creators of any gender or ethnicity in an LDC face a whole different set of challenges to an innovator and a creator. So, like the UK, you ones, but a lot easier, like you, had to make sure all the women who invent get their IP into the system. You've got much bigger problems in some other places.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the problems are are more accentuated. You see them, you see them, you think they're bigger problems, but the bottom line is still the same as to. You know, maybe start with the basic premise how do we get to the ground, how do we get the message to the people on the ground? And this is where we were at. What I said earlier is we need to stop saying you need a patent and you need a trademark and you need a design, and saying what have you invented, what have you innovated or created? And let's start with that and let's start with a business plan.
Speaker 3:So we go in through our regional national development sector, where we have a director and a desk officer for every country that's a member of WIPO, as well as others that are not, if they're interested in potentially becoming a member of WIPO, as well as others that are not, if they're interested in potentially becoming a member of WIPO and say where are you at in everything you're doing?
Speaker 3:What are your national policies? Let us help you build a national IP policy. Let us you know for the women in IP. We've actually collected now on our website 200 national policies of various degrees from all around the world, so that people can see what other countries are looking at doing and what they are actually doing and maybe reach out and say which ones have been effective, which ones have not. So it is a bigger problem to say it's harder to get into the least developed countries to say how best can we help you? But we will tailor make any support that we can provide to you to the benefit of what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's a patent law policy, a patent law act, something on trademarks, something on designs, or it's just an overall very high level at the foreign minister level, national IP policy that says here's what we want to do for intellectual property, for technology, for data privacy, for enforcement, whatever it may be, we can help them at any scale along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right to correct me on trying to grade problems by size. I think a different set of challenges is a much better way of putting it. So thank you, lee, over to you.
Speaker 1:Cheers, gwynne. So, lisa, we're creeping towards the end of the podcast with just a few minutes left, and we don't want to take up more of your time than you're able to spare for us. But are you sat there thinking, oh, I wish they'd ask that question. Is there anything you want to add?
Speaker 3:No, I don't think there's anything substantive that I really want to to share, but I would like to just for to just tell the audience, I guess, that we just finished our General Assembly last, at the end or the beginning of last week, and it was our most successful General Assembly ever, from a bunch of different directions. One is it was the most attended we had 1400 attendees, with almost 900 of them in person. We had the largest number of ministers ever in attendance 21, mostly from least developing countries and some from the developing countries. We had the most beautiful exhibitions from a number of member states. We had so many more bilateral meetings between White Post staff and the member state. I think Darren by himself did over 70 bilateral meetings in the slightly over a week's time going on that, having come a month or so, a month and a half or so, after the diplomatic conference on traditional knowledge and genetic resources, where we finished the treaty in a very multilateral process, which is what we really had hoped for, really worked out well, and I think that same attitude came into the General Assembly in a very positive way, and so we feel like we just had one of the best General Assemblies that we've ever had.
Speaker 3:So now we'll see what happens when we move to the Design Law Treaty Diplomatic Conference. That's two in a year when we haven't had one for however many years now. It's an enormous amount of work and effort on the part of WIPO and the diplomatic staff et cetera. But this will be. The Design Law Treaty Diplomatic Conference will be in Riyadh, saudi Arabia, in November. Law Treaty Diplomatic Conference will be in Riyadh, saudi Arabia, in November and we really want to see the consensus building, the multilateral discussions and ways of working. So we have a lot of hopes for the DLT DipCon and it's coming off of a successful previous DipCon, a great General Assembly, so we're looking forward to having a lot of success at the DLT as well.
Speaker 1:And I think we're seeing it on social media, aren't we? I'm conscious that WIPO's really got its social media apps together LinkedIn, twitter. Yeah, you're very good at telling us what you're very good at, which I think is fantastic. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. We're not quite finished yet, so Gwilym and I like to end the podcast on a slightly tangential question. And I've got one, gwilym, I've got one. I'll ask Gwilym and then we'll come over to you and then Gwilym will surprise me by asking me back. It's just a little thing that we do. So, gwilym, this is probably the podcast where we've had the most initialisms and acronyms. On it. We've had lots and lots and lots of letters or um alphabetic spaghetti, or, however. Do you have a favorite initialism or acronym? Doesn't have, doesn't have to be from word of ip.
Speaker 2:I'm just wondering if you've got a favorite um acronym I've got a couple that come up, um, because they are I've just remembered what I probably can't share, actually back of my brains, I hope, on yesterday, not appropriate for a podcast. But I've got a couple that, um, I love because they're beautiful words that are absolutely part of language but are acronyms and you probably know them. But one is laser, which is called light amplification, where the stimulated emission of radiation has always made me happy because that's exactly what it is. And scuba, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. I love that one too. So those, those are a couple that come out because they're actually just great words and the fact they stand gives them an extra richness.
Speaker 1:There you go and they just enter the lexicon, don't they?
Speaker 2:they become part of language and the other one's from prison.
Speaker 1:I'm not telling you, I'll tell you fair enough that you've probably said enough already. Lisa, how about you? Have you got any favourite acronyms?
Speaker 3:Oh, I would. I'm just going to say, because of where I sit in this chair is PCT.
Speaker 2:We'll get you a T-shirt.
Speaker 1:So mine is do you remember, probably about seven or eight years ago, when we thought that SEPA ought to start to have a strategic plan, we locked council members away in the old SEPA offices and I gave you all a task, and that was to try and describe what SEPA did in three to five words. And you came up with four, and not in the order that we use them. But you came up with community, because we bring patent attorneys together. Learning, because we support their professional development. Influence, because we campaign, advocate on their behalf. And status, because, of course, if you're a fellow CP, you're a chartered patent attorney. And then we rearrange those letters into SILC. So, status, influence, learning, community, silc. So and it just seemed to be so apt for a professional body that's all about the law for the acronym to be SILC. So that would be my faith, the one that we used to describe ourselves.
Speaker 2:It is lovely. I spent quite a long time coming up with synonyms for those words to see what the rudest version I could come up with was. Thank you for sharing that. I'm not sure if there's any answer. It's quite funny.
Speaker 1:Lisa, thank you so much. We're at a close. We always say at the end, though, that if you've listened to the podcast and you've enjoyed what you've listened to, then leave us a little review on the podcasting platform of your choice, and that will help people find us, because we want to grow our audience, willem, don't we?
Speaker 2:Always.
Speaker 1:And we would very much appreciate it if, when it goes out, you signpost it to all of your WIPO colleagues. Lisa, that would be amazing, thank you.
Speaker 3:I'd be more than happy to do that. Thank you for having me. I'm out.