Minutes - TRIPS Council - View details of the intervention/statement

H.E. Ambassador Dr Lansana GBERIE
4; 5; 6 REVIEW OF THE PROVISIONS OF ARTICLE 27.3(B); RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TRIPS AGREEMENT AND THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND FOLKLORE

92.   We would like to recall our previous statements on these items. As indicated previously, in this discussion we often lose the relative importance of the individual components making up the 'Triplets'. The Doha Ministerial Declaration instructed that the TRIPS Council, as part of its work programme to review Article 27.3(b) as well as examine the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore. These are important mandated issues which remain an integral part of the Doha Round single undertaking. Biopiracy remains a pervasive problem and the absence of a multilateral solution, as applicable under the TRIPS Agreement, national disclosure requirements will remain inadequate. Discussions in this forum and those under the auspices of the WIPO IGC are complimentary and not mutually exclusive. In this regard, we welcome the progress made at the recent WIPO General Assembly where consensus was reached on a diplomatic conference dealing with genetic resources. The WTO Membership would certainly take note of such developments. Our delegation would welcome a briefing from WIPO in this regard. 93.   Similarly, it would be useful for the CBD Secretariat to brief the TRIPS Council on the CBD and other implementation issues under the Nagoya Protocol as well as any new developments. Finally, we wish to raise once more, the issue of updating the three technical notes contained in documents IP/C/W/368/Rev.1, IP/C/W/369/Rev.1 and IP/C/W/370/Rev.1. It would be appropriate for the Secretariat to update the information contained in these notes in a neutral manner to further facilitate discussions among Members.

The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
17. The Chair proposed to address these three agenda items together. He recalled that one tool for the review under item 4 was the information provided by Members in response to lists of questions on Article 27.3(b). He said that the latest Annual Report on Notifications and other Information Flows circulated by the Secretariat illustrated that responses to that checklist had been rather sparse recently. So far, only 28 Members had responded to the lists of questions on Article 27.3(b). The Chair thus encouraged Members to submit responses to these checklists, and to update their previous submissions if they were out of date.
18. The Chair noted that two long-standing procedural issues had been discussed extensively on the record at every regular meeting of the Council for almost ten years. The first was the suggestion for the Secretariat to update three factual notes on the Council's discussions on the TRIPS and CBD and related items; these notes were initially prepared in 2002 and last updated in 2006. The second was the request to invite the CBD Secretariat to brief the Council on the Nagoya Protocol to the CBD, initially proposed in October 2010.
19. The Chair noted that the delegations' positions on these issues were well-known and had already extensively recorded in the Council's minutes and therefore suggested that delegations focus their interventions on suggestions on how to resolve the differences and on how make progress on substantive issues.
20. The representatives of South Africa; India; Bangladesh; Sri Lanka; Indonesia, Brazil; Nigeria; Peru; United States of America; Japan; South Africa; Korea, Republic of and China took the floor.
21. The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
IP/C/M/106, IP/C/M/106/Add.1