45. The representative of the United States said that Article 65.5 was a provision which his delegation took very seriously and which it considered very important for the successful operation of the Council for TRIPS. Some monitoring and notification process seemed to be required and should be established by the Council, so that the Council could fulfil its obligations and its mandate under Article 68 to ensure that all Members were implementing the Agreement in line with their obligations. This did not have to be such an onerous burden on individual Members, since it could be presumed that no delegation had the intention of enacting legislation that would lessen the degree of consistency of their intellectual property policies and laws with regard to the TRIPS Agreement. However, in any case, some more consultations were required on the question of how to give effect to the provision of Article 65.5. It seemed to his delegation that one thought that might be explored in this context was that, at a minimum, whenever any Member made a change in its laws after 1 January 1995, that fact should be notified together with an indication of what the law had been and had become, so that other Members could satisfy themselves that Article 65.5 had been honoured. The legislation would, thus, not have to be notified in its entirety; it would suffice to notify the modifications.
