Thank you very much for the question.
As I mentioned, 70% of our applications come from abroad and most Canadians will file outside of Canada. For one example in terms of volumes, last year 12,000 Canadians filed in the U.S. for patents. In reverse, 16,000 Americans filed in Canada.
We have a number of mechanisms in place to help support that. From CIPO's perspective, we do provide information on how to enter markets and what to consider.
We are part of international treaties governed under the World Intellectual Property Organization and we are part of treaties for each of patents, trademarks and industrial designs. This allows someone who wishes to go into multiple markets to file just once through the World Intellectual Property Organization. They pay one fee in one currency and then determine which countries they wish to go in. It's a way of facilitating that movement to the global stage. I'm pleased to say that it was just in the last three years we joined the trademark and industrial design systems.
For all three of them, Canada is ranked quite highly in terms of volume. For the patent system, we are fifth. For the trademark and industrial design systems, we are sixth internationally. That demonstrates that people want to invest in Canada and also that Canadians wish to operate globally.