8. The representative of the United States wished to echo the concerns of Korea and expressed his delegation's interest in the answer to the question from Korea. He also reiterated his delegation's difficulties with the nature of many of the notifications made under Article 4(d). Article 4(d) had been devised as a limited exception to the requirement that each Member afford the nationals of all other Members most-favoured nation treatment in respect of the protection and enjoyment of intellectual property rights. As had been explained in the Secretariat note concerning the application of Article 4(d), the purpose of Article 4(d) was to limit exemptions of pre-existing intellectual property agreements to those which had not only been notified to the Council for TRIPS, but also did not constitute an arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against nationals of other Members. His delegation believed that many agreements that had been notified did not satisfy this latter requirement of Article 4(d). It was apparent from the notifications made that many Members had taken an over-inclusive approach by notifying not only discrete bilateral agreements on specific topics, but basically every agreement to which they were party. Some of these treaties could not possibly justify an exception under Article 4(d). In this regard, he referred, in particular, to notifications of the Paris Convention, the WIPO Convention or the Berne Convention. Despite the apparent recognition of the vitality of these arguments, many Members had not modified their notifications as originally made and, indeed, a number of Members had provided new notifications that were similarly flawed. As a result, his delegation believed that the only appropriate course of action available to correct these deficiencies was to direct questions to those Members concerning their notifications under Article 4(d), under the authority of Article 63.3. His delegation would be providing these questions to selected Members over the course of the coming months.
