584. Firstly, we would like to thank the co-sponsors for putting this important matter on this Council's agenda. For Chile, it is important to reduce the gender gap in all areas of society, with the objective of incentivizing the country's sustainable development, as well as innovation and social welfare. In the area of intellectual property (IP), we recognize that men and women have the same potential for creativity and innovation, yet women continue to be under-represented in a number of areas of IP. As a country, we are therefore seeking to integrate the gender perspective into all technical and institutional processes, with the aim of achieving gender equity so that women and men benefit equally and in order to prevent the continued perpetuation of this inequality.
585. With the aim of reducing this gap and showing how Chile has implemented the gender perspective in intellectual property and innovation, we must mention that the National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI) has created the Gender and Industrial Property Strategic Committee. The purpose of this Committee is to position INAPI as a key player in promoting gender equality and as an instigator of the design of public policies that drive the increased participation of women in the innovation ecosystem through the strategic use of industrial property.
586. One of the activities of note is the creation of a public-private roundtable on gender in industrial property. In April this year, this initiative resulted in the first lines of work being charted to promote the use of industrial property by female entrepreneurs and inventors and to increase the visibility of the contributions they are making in various fields of the national and international ecosystem. This is being achieved through numerous outreach and cooperation activities, such as the development of projects that promote the growth of advanced human capital through mentoring and training and through potential grants for strategic legal advice, especially designed for female entrepreneurs seeking to scale up their businesses and enhance their respective brands.
587. Moreover, INAPI has made valuable progress in collecting and analysing data relating to gender inclusion and industrial property matters, publishing two gender reports, one on trademarks and the other on patents. The first report was published in March 2021 and revealed an increase of 101% in trademark applications filed by women in 2020, while the second report, published in November 2020, revealed that 67% of female inventors come from universities. Innovations linked to pharmaceuticals and biotechnology were the most common, which highlights the increasingly active role played by women in the patent system at the national level.
588. In addition, in June 2021 saw the official launch of the Latin American Network of Intellectual Property and Gender, which is an initiative spearheaded by the IP offices of Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile with support from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
589. In the area of copyright, the Intellectual Property Rights Department (DDI) has published two studies on this subject. The first one was aimed at shedding light on the historical registering behaviour of women in the country from the end of the 19th century until 2010, with the objective of providing an overview of the presence of women in the national creative industry. This showed a gradual trend towards a proportional increase of 10% in the registrations carried out by a female right holder. The second study, prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage and the National Institute of Statistics, provided statistical information on various categories of cultural domains related to creative digital industries, which is an important input for generating data that allows for an understanding of the current economic, social, and cultural phenomena from a gender perspective.
590. In the same context, with the objective of promoting a more progressive and inclusive international trade policy in order to ensure that the benefits of trade and investment are more widely distributed, thereby having a positive impact on economic growth, and reducing inequality, the Under-Secretariat for International Economic Relations has established the Department of Inclusive Trade. The aim of this is to promote international trade that addresses matters such as gender; micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs); and indigenous peoples in international trade. In this context, public-private roundtables are currently being held in order to comprehensively address issues relating to SMEs, gender, and indigenous peoples, in which one of the key pillars under consideration in the discussion is intellectual property.
591. We hope to continue hearing of the activities undertaken by other Members, with a view to learning about their experiences so as to identify new initiatives that can be adapted to Chile's situation.
