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

Ambassador István Major (Hungary)
H.ii TRIPS Council meeting of 1 and 2 December 1998
79. The Chairperson recapitulated the items that would be on the proposed agenda of the next meeting, on 1 and 2 December and suggested, in the light of informal consultation, certain other items. First of all, the Council had agreed to undertake, at its next meeting, the review of the national implementing legislation of Ecuador, Mongolia and Panama. Second, as concluded under agenda item C above, the Council would take up the issue of a review of the implementation of Article 70.8 and 70.9, as well as of a review of the implementation of Article 66.2. Third, Members had been invited to provide their responses to the Checklist of Questions (documents IP/C/13 and IP/C/13/Add.1) in the context of the review under Article 24.2 by 16 November. The next meeting would be the first meeting after that deadline on which the Council should take stock of responses received. Fourth, as concluded under the previous agenda sub-item, the issue of "Trade Facilitation" would be taken up. Fifth, the Council should adopt its annual report to the General Council. Sixth, drawing attention to the provisions of Article 27.3(b) of the Agreement, which required a review of these provisions four years after the entry into force of the WTO Agreement, i.e. in 1999, he proposed that the next meeting would be an appropriate time for an initial exchange of views on how this review should be carried out. Seventh, he referred to another built-in agenda item of the TRIPS Agreement which had to be taken up before the end of next year, namely the examination of the scope and modalities of "non-violation" disputes in the TRIPS context, as required by Article 64.3. In this connection, he suggested, on the basis of consultations he had held, that the next meeting would be a good time to have an initial exchange of views on the work to be done and that the Secretariat be requested to prepare a factual background note on the experience with disputes so far under the TRIPS Agreement, including any references made to non-violation issues, the negotiating history of paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 64, the experience with non-violation complaints under the GATT/WTO, and any information available on the use of the non-violation concept in disputes on intellectual property matters elsewhere. Apart from these topics, he said that the Council should also address all the agenda items that were on the agenda of the present meeting as well as any work that might have to be done as a result of the work programme for next year's Ministerial Conference, for example in relation to electronic commerce.
IP/C/M/20