   
  
IP/C/W/662/Corr.1  
 
3 February  2020 
(20-0813) Page: 1/1 
Council for Trade -Related Aspects of  
Intellectual Property Rights  Original: English  
 
INTELLECTUAL PROPERT Y AND INNOVATION:  
2020 THEME OF MAKING  MSMES COMPETITIVE  -  
MAKING MSMES COMPETI TIVE THROUGH TRADEMA RKS 
COMMUNICATION FROM AUSTRALIA; CANADA; CHILE; THE EUROPEAN UNION; JAPAN; 
SWITZERLAND;  THE SEPARATE  CUSTOMS  TERRITORY OF TAIWAN , PENGHU, KINMEN AND  
MATSU ; AND THE UNITED  STATES  OF AMERICA  
Corrigendum  
The following corrigendum is circulated following a request from the co -sponsors received on 
28 January 2020: In p aragraph 3 on page 1 the phra se "the importance of trademarks among lower -
income economies " had been omitted . Thus, paragraph 3 should read as follows:  
 
3.  Trademarks are the most widespread form of registered IP rights. Statistics from the World 
Intellectual Property Organization show that in 2018, there were 14.3 million applications for 
trademarks globally, compared to 3.3 million applications for patents. In addition, there were, in 
2018, 1.1 million trademark applications from lower -income economies, compared to 87 ,200 patent 
applications from those same economies. This represents a trademark -to-patent ratio of 12.6, which 
drops to 4.2 among higher -income economies. While the underlying causes for these different ratios 
are a separate issue, the importance of tradem arks among lower -income economies, where MSMEs 
play a particularly major economic role, means that an enhanced understanding of the needs and 
realities of MSMEs regarding trademarks can help MSMEs access the IP system and generally make 
them more competiti ve. 
 
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