49. The representative of Hungary said that his delegation had received questions concerning certain statistical data on lawsuits, injunctions, provisional measures, border measures and criminal cases. His delegation shared the concerns of the delegation of Canada in this respect. Article 63.1 and 63.2 of the Agreement required Members to publish, or make publicly available, laws and regulations and final decisions and administrative rulings of general application and also laid down notification requirements with regard to these. These provisions did not create any obligation to collect, publish and notify statistical data on infringement cases and enforcement measures, nor did any other provision in the Agreement. Hungarian authorities could only provide such specific data if they developed a separate system for collecting IPR-related data, which would require the establishment of an information system within the judiciary distinct from that for the enforcement of laws in general, which would not be in harmony with Article 41.5 of the Agreement. In any case, his delegation was not convinced that statistical data would be informative. For example, a low figure for lawsuits concerning infringement might indicate that civil law remedies were not available in practice or that laws were not satisfactorily enforced but, on the other hand, it might show that out-of-court dispute settlement procedures were efficient or that the number of infringements was low because of law-abiding conduct. The analysis of such data might lead to misleading results and unjustified conclusions.
