H.E. Ambassador Dr Pimchanok PITFIELD

Canada

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

131.  Congratulations for your election to Chair this Council. 132.  Canada's position is well-known, and we would refer to our previous interventions on agenda items 4, 5, and 6. With respect to procedural matters, as previously noted and without prejudice to our position on substantive matters, Canada could support a procedural briefing from the CBD Secretariat to the TRIPS Council. Canada could also support the compilation of the three factual notes on TRIPS and the CBD, and remains of the view that this would remain an information collating exercise. 133.  There were several references this morning to disclosure in the present discussion, and on this Canada recalls, without prejudice, that last year, the WIPO General Assembly decided to convene next year a conference on an international legal instrument relating to intellectual property, genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, which will very much be the forum for these discussions, including such that we should avoid duplication of these discussions and indeed these negotiations. 134.  Canada joins other Members in strongly condemning Russia's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and calling for it to end.

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thus encouraged Members to submit responses to these checklists, and to update their previous submissions if they were out of date.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