At its meeting in December 1998, the TRIPS Council agreed to initiate the review of the provisions of TRIPS Article 27.3(b), which deals with patentability or non-patentability of plant and animal inventions and the protection of plant varieties, through an information gathering exercise. The TRIPS Council invited Members that were already under an obligation to apply Article 27.3(b) to provide information on how the matters addressed in these provisions were presently treated in their domestic law. Other Members were invited to provide such information on a best-endeavours basis. While it would be left to each Member to provide information as it would see fit, the Secretariat provided an illustrative list of questions in order to assist Members in preparing their contributions (document IP/C/W/122). Meanwhile, certain Members developed another set of representative questions (document IP/C/W/126) and invited interested Members to complete their responses, if they so desire.

This page allows you to search Members' responses to the illustrative lists of questions. You can consult your search results on screen, download and print them in Excel format. You can also download individual documents.