37. The representative of Malaysia said that both IP/C/W/429 as well as the Swiss proposal in IP/C/W/423 provided useful contributions to the discussion by highlighting different approaches to the issue of disclosure. In the context of these papers, she sought to clarify, first, whether the reference to the obligation to disclose the "source and country of origin" in the heading of IP/C/W/429 meant that separate pieces of information were to be given with respect to "source" and "country"; second, whether the words "biological resources" could be used interchangeably with "genetic resources"; third, whether, with regard to the "trigger for the disclosure obligation", there were differences between the Swiss proposal and the proposal in document IP/C/W/429. The latter stated that the trigger for disclosure was "any use" even if such use was incidental as long as such use would be relevant for prior art, inventorship or entitlement determinations and for understanding or carrying out the invention. In this context, she asked if such uses which trigger the disclosure were meant to be a trigger for prior art reasons only or whether there would also be some relationship with the issues of benefit-sharing and prior informed consent. Fourth, she noted that in the Swiss proposal IP/C/W/423, for the disclosure requirement to be triggered, an invention needed to be directly based on a specific genetic resource. In other words, the trigger depended on the specific properties of an invention and the inventor must have had physical access to this particular specific property. In this context she asked if "directly based" or "depending on a specific property" would also include cases where direct modifications had been made to the specific property which would result in a different chemical entity. She also asked whether these two conditions were mutually exclusive as it was not clear whether "physical access" meant "possession" or "contact" or if contact would also include "non physical contact", such as secondary sources of information.
