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

H.E. Ambassador Dr. Lansana GBERIE
4; 5; 6 REVIEW OF THE PROVISIONS OF ARTICLE 27.3(B); RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TRIPS AGREEMENT AND THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND FOLKLORE
75.   We will also be brief. We align ourselves with the intervention made by Tanzania on behalf of the African Group and fully support those made by the other distinguish delegations that have just been made. We would like to recall our previous statements on these items. As indicated previously, in this discussion we often lose the relative importance of the individual components making up the 'Triplets'. The Doha Ministerial Declaration made a clear instruction, and we remain fully convinced that biopiracy remains a pervasive problem and the absence of a multilateral solution, as applicable under the TRIPS Agreement, national disclosure requirements will remain inadequate. Discussions in this forum and those under the auspices of the WIPO IGC are complimentary and not mutually exclusive. In line with our previous statements, we reiterate the call for the CBD Secretariat to brief the TRIPS Council. Finally, we wish to raise once more the issue of the update of the three technical notes.
The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
20. The Chair proposed to address these three agenda items together. He recalled that one tool for the review under item 4 was the information provided by Members in response to lists of questions on Article 27.3(b). He said that the Annual Report on Notifications and other Information Flows that had been introduced by the Secretariat at the Council's last meeting illustrated that responses to that checklist had been rather sparse recently. So far, only 28 Members had responded to the lists of questions on Article 27.3(b), with Saudi Arabia being the most recent Member to submit responses. The Chair thus encouraged Members to submit responses to these checklists, and to update their previous submissions if they were out of date, noting that the e-TRIPS Submission System provided an easy and convenient online tool for drafting and submitting responses.
21. The Chair indicated two long-standing procedural issues which had been discussed extensively on the record, at every regular meeting of the Council for almost ten years. The first one was the suggestion for the Secretariat to update three factual notes on the Council's discussions on the TRIPS and CBD and related items; these notes were initially prepared in 2002 and last updated in 2006. The second was the request to invite the CBD Secretariat to brief the Council on the Nagoya Protocol to the CBD, initially proposed in October 2010.
22. The Chair noted that the delegations' positions on these issues were well-known and had already extensively recorded in the Council's minutes and therefore suggested that delegations focus their interventions on suggestions on how to resolve differences and make progress on substantive issues.
23. The representatives of India; Tanzania, on behalf of the African Group; Bangladesh; Brazil; South Africa; Indonesia; Sri Lanka; Egypt; Peru; the United States; Canada; China; Japan; and Chile took the floor.
24. The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
IP/C/M/105, IP/C/M/105/Add.1, IP/C/M/105/Corr.1