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GENEVA – A Singaporean beat a Chinese candidate in the race to lead the world patent office, heading off Beijing’s bid for a fifth UN leadership role, much to the satisfaction of the United States.
Daren Tang defeated fellow legal expert Wang Binying in a closed-door vote by dozens of countries to become director general of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which shapes global rules for intellectual property.
Intellectual property has been at the heart of a trade war between Washington and Beijing. Washington, along with many other Western countries, had backed Tang for the job and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that Washington was following the patent office vote “very, very closely”.
Tang was chosen in a vote of WIPO’s coordinating committee, a group of 83 countries chaired by France which said the breakdown was 55 for Tang and 28 for the Chinese candidate.
“We are very pleased with the election outcome,” said Andrew Bremberg, US ambassador to the United Nations.
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