H.E. Ambassador Dr Pimchanok PITFIELD

China

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

107.  China would like to congratulate you for taking this very important post and we are looking forward to working together under your very wise coordination. 108.  China has attached great importance to the TRIPS-CBD issue and has always been actively participating in discussions. China believes that in order to better protecting genetic resources and traditional knowledge, it is necessary to fulfill the obligations of prior informed consent and benefit sharing, while benefit sharing based on contractual agreements and traditional knowledge databases are far from enough to achieve effective protection. In the 2nd phase meeting of COP15 of the CBD, as presidency, China promoted the adoption of the "Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework", which is an ambitious and pragmatic framework, a milestone charting a new blueprint for global biodiversity governance. The framework will guide the international community working together to curb and reverse the loss of biodiversity, to promote the process of biodiversity restoration, and to jointly move towards the vision of harmonious coexistence with nature by 2050. 109.  By listing it as one of the important goals, the framework will ensure the fair and just sharing of the benefits generated from the use of genetic resources, from digital sequence information of genetic resources and from traditional knowledge related to genetic resources. This reflected the great importance and common consensus attached by the international community to this issue. At present, we are witnessing a standstill at the discussion on this topic. We hope that the TRIPS Council could attach importance to the achievements and progress made in COP15 and we look forward to an early rejuvenation of this topic in the TRIPS Council. 110.  Regarding the procedure issue, we support the suggestion for the TRIPS Council to invite the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat to brief on the Nagoya Protocol and its progress. We hope the Secretariat could renew the three factual notes. In recent years, although The WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) has conducted a lot of discussions and negotiations on the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, achieving certain results, however, China believes that WIPO IGC discussions and negotiations on the above-mentioned issues does not contradict with Members' discussion in the WTO.

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. She 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). She 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), with Saudi Arabia being the most recent Member to respond in 2021. 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 delegations' positions on these issues were well-known and had already been extensively recorded in the Council's minutes. She 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 India; Bangladesh; Indonesia; Peru; South Africa; China; Tanzania, on behalf of the African Group; Ecuador; the United States of America; Japan; Nigeria; Thailand; Korea, Republic of; Canada and Brazil 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/108, IP/C/M/108/Add.1