56. The representative of the United States thanked the delegations of the European Communities, Switzerland and Hungary for their written contributions which his delegation would study over the summer break. With regard to the suggested correlation charts, his delegation would prefer to prepare its own table and would not want the table in the non-paper that the European Communities had made available to Members earlier this year to be used for that purpose. His delegation would be uncomfortable with relying on a third party evaluation of the United States law as a basis for further work in the TRIPS Council. Article 24.2 did not speak of engaging in new wide-ranging discussions of advancing the frontiers of the protection of geographical indications, but only concerned a review of the implementation of obligations and the possibility to address deficiencies. His delegation continued to be of the opinion that the review of national implementing legislation in November 1996 had essentially been sufficient to address questions concerning the implementation of the Agreement's provisions on geographical indications and remained unsure as to what was the target of additional work. The review in November 1996 had been quite thorough and his delegation was still analysing answers to some follow-up questions it had posed to the European Communities, which had only recently been received. This illustrated that the information generated by the November 1996 review exercise was still incomplete; consequently, it would be premature to invite the Secretariat to step in and prepare the suggested synoptic table. Furthermore, before Members would engage in a new review exercise, his delegation would prefer the terms that would guide the exercise first to be identified. The second table in document IP/C/W/75 would seem to be based on an arbitrary selection of criteria regarding the provisions of national systems for the protection of geographical indications. Before Members would agree to engage in the development of such a comparative table, they first had to agree on the criteria to be used. In conclusion, at this point in time, his delegation could not support the suggestion that the Secretariat prepare such a synoptic table.
