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President Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, respected colleagues,

Today on the agenda we have a range of questions regarding implementing state policy in the area of military-technical cooperation.

But first of all I would like to say a few words about recent achievements.

I would like to note that this year, Russia’s military-technical cooperation system has shown stable performance and has produced some good results. Over the first seven months of this year our deliveries abroad have come to a total of more then three billion dollars. We have completed more than 70 percent of the annual target that was set.

The process of liberalising trade in military goods is continuing. In particular, there are now more manufacturers able to enter the international market as independent players. Ten percent of our defence enterprises are now entitled to supply spare parts and components abroad.

The list of military goods that can be exported has now been approved.

I would also like to note the government’s positive work. We have talked a lot about the need for strict controls in this sector. On the one hand, we need liberalisation, but on the other hand there must also be control over these activities. The government has taken the appropriate decisions, and in a number of cases has simplified procedures, which allows the defence enterprises to react more flexibly to orders from clients while at the same time ensuring that state controls are functioning.

Two major arms and military equipment exhibitions were held in Russia this year and were significant events. These were the Naval Show in St. Petersburg and the now traditional Moscow Aviation and Space Show.

This year, the Moscow Aviation and Space Show reached a new level and brought in a lot of visitors and also participants from abroad.

These kinds of international shows help strengthen the positions of Russian manufacturers on foreign markets and, of course, they also promote military-technical cooperation between states.

I think we are making good progress in this respect. We are moving forward carefully but surely. We have a good level of cooperation with the European countries – with France and Italy. We have been working with Asian countries – with India and China – for a long time now and with success. We have reached a new level of cooperation with Israel, as the Israeli Prime Minister and I noted yesterday during our meeting. We are ready to develop relations in this area with other countries, too.

Today it is important to consolidate these positive results and lay out an action plan for the future. I would like this meeting to come up with concrete proposals for developing military-technical cooperation and its procedures.

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I would like to look in more detail at the second item on the agenda today – protecting the intellectual property rights to the military technology that we develop and transfer to foreign countries.

It is no secret that technologies developed by our scientists and designers are often used by other countries as a base for producing their own competitive and highly profitable products, which then compete with our products, including on the markets of third countries.

We know that the bulk of the work on stocktaking of the licences transferred and re-registration of rights has already been completed. I would ask the directors of the relevant organisations to continue to pay great attention to this work.

I am convinced that Russian intellectual capital can and should work for the Russian budget and I think it is of crucial importance that we come up with a common strategy for protecting Russian intellectual property rights in the military-technical cooperation area. This has to be a strategy that will provide for clear regulation of exports of military technology and finished military goods. Improving our intellectual property rights protection legislation is a priority. One of our aims in this respect is to create a balance of interests of the state, the manufacturers and the authors of the inventions.

We must clearly define the functions and responsibilities of the Military-Technical Cooperation Committee, the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry regarding contractual and legal questions and protection of intellectual property rights.

I think we could also look at whether we should also involve the defence companies that have signed licensed contracts in some aspects of this work.