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

Mr. S. Harbinson (Hong Kong)
World Trade Organization
C.1.iv Articles 1.3 and 3.1
50. The representative of the Secretariat recalled that in paragraph 14 of PC/IPL/7/Add.2 alternative procedures for possible decision by the TRIPS Council had been suggested. The first provided that, in the absence of any action on the part of a Member who had already made notifications under the Berne Convention or the Rome Convention, its existing notifications in those contexts would be assumed to be valid also under the TRIPS Agreement on the basis of a decision from the Council for TRIPS that would give legal status to those notifications under the TRIPS Agreement. The second approach would require each Member to confirm an earlier notification or to notify something different. Under this approach, passivity or failure to do something would mean that no notification had been effected under the TRIPS Agreement. On reflection, it seemed that this more active approach might be preferable. One problem with the first approach was that if a Member took no action, there could be room for doubt as to whether the absence of action was due to the matter having been overlooked or due to a deliberate policy decision. Also, the obligations in the TRIPS Agreement on "related rights" were somewhat different from those under the Rome Convention. Therefore it did not necessarily follow that a country which had made certain notifications under the Rome Convention would want to make the same notifications in the TRIPS context.
IP/C/M/1