Ambassador Alfredo Suescum (Panama)

Chile

12 CONTRIBUTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO FACILITATE THE TRANSFER OF ENVIRONMENTALLY RATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

255. I would like to extend my thanks to Ecuador for the proposal made. We believe that it is very important to promote access to technologies to mitigate climate change, particularly in developing countries. We also agree with the need to use the flexibility contained within TRIPS with the aim of incentivizing access to this type of technology. 256. As was mentioned by New Zealand, we believe that the TRIPS Agreement already contains the appropriate flexibility in order to alleviate the problems for access to clean technologies, which might bear on intellectual property. Furthermore, the TRIPS Agreement has the ability to alleviate this in a very neutral way, which means it can avoid differentiated treatment, which might lead to a discriminatory regime between various areas or between various technologies or industries. Although we think that access to clean technology is extremely relevant, we believe that as it stands the proposal could also diminish the incentives to use environmentally sound technologies. 257. We agree with Ecuador that this is an important issue without prejudice to our reservation on what is contained in the proposal. We believe that there is still room to discuss this within the Council.

The Council took note of the statements made.

12.1. The Chairman recalled that, at the Council's meeting in March 2013, Ecuador had briefly presented, under "Other Business", its submission entitled "Contribution of Intellectual Property for Facilitating the Transfer of Environmentally Rational Technology" (document IP/C/W/585). That document had been discussed at the Council's meeting in June 2013 under an item on "Intellectual Property, Climate Change and Development" that had been put on the agenda at the request of Ecuador.

12.2. The representatives of Ecuador, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Indonesia, Cuba, China, United States, European Union, India, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Switzerland, Brazil and Venezuela took the floor. The statements will be reproduced in an addendum to the present record.

12.3. The Council took note of the statements made.

IP/C/M/74, IP/C/M/74/Add.1