On 4 March this year, the Coordination Committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has nominated Mr. Daren Tang from Singapore for the post of Director General of the Organization.

The Coordination Committee, which comprises 83 states from the 196 member states of WIPO, including the Republic of Moldova, met on March 4 in an extraordinary session also attended, with the right to vote, by the delegation of the Republic of Moldova, led by Mr. Iulian Grigorita, a.i. Commissioner of Business, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the UN Office in Geneva. The AGEPI representative, Mrs. Liliana Vieru, Head of Communication and International Relations Direction, was also part of the Moldovan delegation.

The process of electing a Director General of WIPO is governed by the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Procedures for the Nomination and Appointment of Directors General of WIPO, adopted by Member States in October 2019.

The electoral process consisted of two rounds of voting from an initial list of six candidates. Kazakhstan’s candidate withdrew her candidacy ahead of the first round of voting. Following the first round, the candidate with the least votes, the representative from Peru, was eliminated. Two other candidates, namely from Colombia and Ghana, withdrew their candidatures ahead of the second round of voting.

In the second round of voting, final one, participated the representative of Singapore: Mr. Daren Tang and that of China: Mrs. Binying Wang. Mr Tang was declared victorious with a score of 55 votes, compared with 28 votes accumulated by the representative of China.

The WIPO General Assembly will meet in an extraordinary session on May 7-8, 2020, to confirm the Coordination Committee’s nomination.

Mr. Daren Tang is currently the Chief Executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, an office ranked by the World Trademark Review as the most innovative intellectual property office of the year 2019. Mr. Tang is expected to take over WIPO’s leadership on October 1, 2020, after the expiration, on September 30, of the mandate of the current Director General, Mr. Francis Gurry.