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

Ambassador Federico A. González (Paraguay)
L INFORMATION ON RELEVANT DEVELOPMENTS ELSEWHERE IN THE WTO
229. The Chairman updated the Council on the status of acceptances of the Protocol Amending the TRIPS Agreement. He said that, since the Council's previous meeting, Bangladesh had deposited its instrument of acceptance on 15 March (document WT/Let/758). He encouraged Members that had not yet notified their acceptance of the Protocol to ensure that necessary measures were being taken in their capitals to allow the consideration of the acceptances in a timely fashion. 230. Recalling some of the information on the procedural requirements for acceptance that the Legal Affairs Division of the WTO Secretariat provided to the Council at the previous annual review of the Paragraph 6 System, he said that, by accepting the Protocol, a Member signalled its consent that all Members were entitled to make use of the additional flexibilities that the amendment provided. Since the acceptance of the Protocol and the adoption of domestic implementing legislation were two distinct processes, there was no need to have in place any domestic implementing legislation at the time of acceptance of the Protocol. 231. He also recalled that the Secretariat had made this information, together with a model instrument of acceptance, available in writing in order to further assist Members in drawing up their own instruments of acceptance. This information was available on a webpage on "How to Accept the Protocol Amending the TRIPS Agreement"1, which could be accessed through the dedicated gateway page on "TRIPS and Public Health".2
IP/C/M/66

1 1: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/accept_e.htm

2 2: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/pharmpatent_e.htm