Greetings from the new Reporter General of AIPPI

Dear Members of AIPPI, dear friends,

As the new Reporter General, I would like to thank you for electing me to this leadership position – thank you for your trust and encouragement. I am very grateful that I can work with six other members of the Reporter General Team, who are all highly ranked and leading international practitioners, namely Guillaume Henry (FR, First Deputy Reporter General), Johanna Flythström (FI, Second Deputy Reporter General), as well as Rafael Atap (BR), Klaudia Blach-Morysinska (PL), Mamta Rani Jha (IN), and Yanfeng Xiong (CN) as Assistants to the Reporter General.

For my two-year term, it is my ambition to enhance the attractiveness and activity of the Standing Committees of AIPPI, and to focus on imminent challenges of the IP system in the scientific and educational work of our association, most notably extraordinarily rapid advance of artificial intelligence in various sectors of technology, science and economy.

The Standing Committees of AIPPI provide most valuable and cutting-edge work results, such as SC Resolution, Position Papers, Book Project and Webinars. One designated member of the RGT constantly interacts with the leadership and the members of each Standing Committee, which provides for an invaluable source of information and inspiration for the work of the RGT as the driver of the substantive work of our association. Given the rapid development of law, technology, and commerce, new topics need to be covered by Standing Committees. I will ensure that the panel of available AIPPI Standing Committees keeps track with these challenges and changes, so that they continue to provide an attractive, informative and interactive platform for our members.

The AIPPI Resolutions are the flagship and signature work products of our association. In its 127 years of history, AIPPI researched various most difficult topics under the guidance of my 14 predecessors (the number of “ex” Reporter Generals will increase more rapidly now, given the two-year term limitation we introduced). AIPPI concluded many Resolutions which are relied on by lawmakers, courts, IP Offices, and practitioner. The topics to be studied by AIPPI going forward are proposed by you, our members, distilled by the Program Committee, and eventually decided by ExCo. The Reporter General is primarily involved in the development of the Resolutions, once the topics have been voted on by ExCo. I am determined to provide inspiration and guidance in the entire process of the development of future Resolutions, continuing the monumental work of my predecessors.

I am very pleased to share that AIPP will study four very important topics in the upcoming working cycle for the Yokohama World Congress:

• Patents: Compulsory licensing
• Trade marks: Exhaustion of trade mark rights
• Copyright: AI & Copyright
• General: Preliminary Injunctions: Requirements for compensating damage suffered by defendants.

The Copyright topic addresses one of the biggest challenges in the history of copyright, likely even exceeding the impact of the introduction of streaming technology: To enable an artificial intelligence (AI) to produce “creative” work results, such as texts, pictures, music, movies etc., the AI must be extensively trained with pre-existing works, which are all most likely protected by existing copyrights. Regulating access to such “training material”, the question of remuneration of rightsholders, and eventually the question of infringement are most challenging study items. I’m personally most pleased that AIPPI is scientifically studying this cutting-edge topic, taking again the thought leadership in the global discussion. This Study Question will be a challenge, and we will perfectly master it as we previously did so in our 127 years of history!