333. The delegation of Bangladesh would like to thank the delegations of Australia; the European Union; Hong Kong, China; Japan; Peru; Chinese Taipei; the Russian Federation; Singapore; Switzerland; and the United States for presenting this item. I would also like to especially thank the delegation of Switzerland for their communication contained in IP/C/W/612 which contains very useful and encouraging information regarding the Swiss education system. We would also like to thank the delegation of Japan for their very interesting presentation on their IP programme in schools and the delegation of Australia for their document on national innovation and science agenda under STEM education.
334. This is a very important issue and we consider that IP is an important catalyst which could contribute immensely towards socioeconomic growth and development and well-being. Unfortunately, not all countries benefit from their IP regimes in the same way. We believe that our goal should be to achieve more balance in our IP system, protecting the rights of innovators as well as the needs of the public and the society, that is an equitable balance between the rights and responsibility. I would like to quote from paragraph 3.1 from the Swiss document:
"There is no single or best way to raise awareness or put an IP education and training system in place. Much depends on a country's particular circumstances, stage of development, economic priorities, know-how and other factors."
335. In the same vein, we would also say there is no one-fit-all solution. We consider that based on the experience in the developing countries and LDCs, the education system should promote and encourage innovation first, so that a child is initially aware of the need to imagine and then work on his dream or creativity. The commercial aspect of IP comes later.
336. One downside of the present patent system is to be primarily driven by commercial benefit and thus innovation in the less commercially rewarding fields suffers since innovators are not interested to invest their time and energy in the invention which produces less commercial returns. Their diligence and uncommon requirements in developing countries and LDCs perennially suffer from this dilemma. We are hopeful that education will promote and emphasize the general idea of innovation, and not the commercial interest as exposed by the existing IP system and only then the true benefit of innovation and IP would be realized through education.
