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

H Technical cooperation
59. The Chairman referred to the Workshop on the Border Enforcement Provisions of the TRIPS Agreement which had been held the day before and thanked the International Bureau of WIPO for its willingness to participate with the WTO Secretariat in the organization of the Workshop and the Governments of Egypt, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, as well as the Secretariat of the World Customs Organization, for their willingness to provide speakers for the Workshop, to complement the presentations made by the representatives of the WTO and WIPO. The Chairman also thanked all others that had contributed to the discussions at the Workshop. Continuing, he said that, as Members might recall, the Workshop had been something of a pilot project aimed at assessing the usefulness of providing an opportunity for more in-depth exploration of specific aspects of implementation of the TRIPS Agreement and related technical cooperation issues in a more informal setting in the margins of a Council meeting. He invited delegations to comment on the Workshop and to share with the Council what lessons might be drawn from it for possible future events of this nature. If there was a general feeling that further thematic discussions of this nature would be useful, he invited delegations to provide input as to the possible topics for such discussions. 60. Continuing, the Chairman recalled that the Council had agreed, at its meetings of 22 February and 9 May 1996, that the present meeting would have a special focus on the issue of technical cooperation. In preparation for that discussion, each developed country Member had been invited to update the information on its technical cooperation activities relevant to the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement. Similarly, intergovernmental organizations presently observers to the TRIPS Council had been invited to do the same. The resulting documentation concerning the technical cooperation activities of developed country Members could be found in documents IP/C/W/34 and Addenda 1 to 5, while the contributions of intergovernmental organizations had been distributed in documents IP/C/W/35 and Addenda 1 to 5. Information on the WTO Secretariat's technical cooperation activities in the TRIPS area could be found in document IP/C/W/36. He regretted that there was still a number of developed country Members that had not yet provided any information to the Council on their technical cooperation activities. He said that, given the importance that the Council attached to this issue in the light of the needs of developing countries for such assistance, he hoped that the Members in question would be able to provide such information before the Council meeting in November. The Chairman intended to provide an opportunity, at that meeting, for Members to make further comments on the information submitted that they might not yet have been able to study and on the further information to be provided before the November meeting. He also recalled that the Council had agreed, at its meeting in July, to invite each developed country Member to notify a contact point for technical cooperation purposes relating to TRIPS at the same time as it would submit updated information on its technical cooperation activities. The contact points that had been notified had been compiled in document IP/N/7, which would be kept up to date through addenda and corrigenda and periodic revisions. He hoped that those developed country Members that had not yet notified such a contact point would do so as soon as possible. He suggested that delegations, in commenting, might focus on any needs for technical cooperation which were not being fully met or in respect of which further efforts might be helpful. The discussion would also provide an opportunity to pursue certain points concerning the participation of developing countries in the review exercise concerning national implementing legislation or any other matter relating to technical cooperation relevant to the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement.
IP/C/M/9