488. As on previous occasions, the Secretariat will provide a brief update of the IP policy issues that have come up in the most recent Trade Policy Reviews.
489. Since the last TRIPS Council Meeting in November 2018, the Trade Policy Reviews of the Armenia; Hong Kong, China; Nepal; and the United States have taken place. Of course, we will not attempt to summarize the full range of issues covered in each of these reviews; we will limit the update to those matters on which Members, including both developed and developing country Members, actively registered an interest by posing questions during the review process. The issues that were of particular interest in this concrete sense included:
Domestic implementation of the TRIPS Agreement;
Implementation of national intellectual property policies;
Profit tax deductions for the purchase of IPRS;
Contribution of intellectual property intensive industries to exports and imports;
Copyright regimes, covering online and technological protection measures;
Trademark regimes, including protection of well-known and unregistered trademarks, as well as requirements for prior use;
Geographical indications regimes;
Protection of industrial designs;
Patent regimes, including projects to improve the efficiency and quality of the patent application and examination processes.
Protection of undisclosed information and test data;
Technology transfer policy, including projects to enhance innovation technology commercialization and partnerships;
Governmental expenditures on research and development;
Protection of trade secrets;
Licensing and competition policy;
Enforcement, civil remedies, criminal penalties online and at the border;
Methodologies for calculating loss caused by infringements;
Procedures for settling disputes, including mediation; and
The Accession to, and implementation of, WIPO instruments.
490. Additionally, the Secretariat has contributed to the TRIPS-related section of the G20 and WTOwide Director-General's Monitoring Reports, which were circulated to Members in late November 2018.
491. The section on "Policy Developments in Trade and Intellectual Property" in these reports highlights the trade-related IP policy initiatives undertaken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and South Africa; as well as the information on developments in domestic legislation and administrative issues submitted for the monitoring exercise by Australia, Indonesia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Turkey.
