WIPO Director General Meets China's President and Attends International Gathering of Scientists

Geneva, October 16, 2000
Press Updates UPD/2000/109

The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Dr. Kamil Idris, met in Beijing on October 11, 2000, the President of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Jiang Zemin, on the occasion of an international gathering of scientists, at which both the President and Dr. Idris spoke on the universal relevance of intellectual property.

The meeting with President Jiang Zemin, which was attended by the other keynote speakers, highlighted the importance of intellectual property issues to the scientific community. The presence of the other speakers, including, Professor Samuel Ting, Chinese Nobel physics laureate, underscored this point. Dr. Idris praised the President's personal commitment to the cause of promoting intellectual property protection in China.

In his address to the International Conference on Engineering and Technological Sciences, Dr. Idris said "intellectual property rights are the foundation of human existence and co-existence. Intellectual property rights in this century will be foreign to no culture and native to all nations." The Director General emphasized the critical importance of intellectual property within today's knowledge-driven society, particularly in the development of engineering and technological sciences and pointed to the opportunities and challenges presented by modern information technologies. He said, "the digital age requires us to invent and implement effective enforcement measures that ensure respect for intellectual property rights as well as the integrity of the intellectual property system." In this regard, he also referred to the need to update and modernize established intellectual property concepts to ensure that the system was able to accommodate the rapid changes in technology and its application in all spheres of life.

The Director General underlined WIPO's commitment to promoting broader use of the intellectual property system. He outlined a number of measures currently being undertaken by WIPO to demystify intellectual property through, for example, training and public awareness campaigns. He said, "it is vital that leaders, policy-makers, and the general public understand the importance of intellectual property in shaping their future and, from this understanding, learn to respect the role intellectual property rights play in encouraging the innovation and creativity that will increasingly fuel human progress in the 21st Century." "It is equally vital that they realize that the source of this most precious of resources is to be found within themselves - that countries are no longer solely dependent on traditional and finite material resources but on the infinite resources of invention and knowledge that lie waiting to be unleashed in the minds of their citizens," he added.

The Conference was sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Engineering in cooperation with the Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences. A highly prestigious event in the calendar of the science and technology community, this was the first time that the Conference had been held in Beijing. Other speakers included renowned figures in the field of science and technology, namely, Mr. Samuel C.C. Ting, 1976 Nobel laureate for physics, Mr. Wm A. Wulf, President National Academy of Engineering, USA, Professor Sir Alec Broers, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Mr. Hans-Jürgen Warnecke, President of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany, and Mr. Xu Kuangdi, Mayor of Shanghai and Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Some 2,800 members of the international scientific community and senior government officials attended the conference.

Dr. Idris also met with the Mr. Xu Jialu, Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress to discuss a range of copyright issues, including the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Phonograms and Performances Treaty (WPPT) which set out minimum standards of copyright protection in cyberspace.

During his visit to China, Dr. Idris, also opened the WIPO Asian Regional Seminar on Intellectual Property Protection of New Technologies co-organized with the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) which was held in Beijing from October 10 to 12, 2000. In his opening speech, the Director General emphasized the importance of protecting new technologies as intellectual property to secure their future growth and to spur social and economic development. Dr. Idris applauded the Chinese authorities for their achievements in modernizing intellectual property operations in China and reaffirmed the Organization's continued support of national efforts to reinforce intellectual property protection in that country.

Dr. Idris also visited the China Intellectual Property Training Center in Beijing which is an important partner in the intellectual property distance learning programs offered by the WIPO Worldwide Academy.

The Seminar dealt with a wide range of themes and included specialist sessions on biotechnological inventions, protection of genetic resources and biodiversity, electronic commerce, and a series of issues relating to copyright and new technologies and competition law policy.

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