154. The representative of the United States recalled that the joint proposal only required that each Member participating in the system commit to ensuring that its domestic procedures would include a provision to consult the database when making decisions in accordance with its domestic law. In contrast with the other two proposals, this would ensure the facilitation of the protection of geographical indications in a manner consistent with the mandate of this Special Session and would not prejudice rights and obligations under the TRIPS Agreement.
155. His delegation had serious concerns with the presumptions foreshadowed both in the EC and Hong Kong, China proposals for a number of reasons. These presumptions would create a right in favour of a foreign right holder of a geographical indication registered under the system and any prior use or prior trademark could be significantly curtailed. Moreover, these two proposals seemed to facilitate a type of "automatic claiming" of a broad range of terms throughout the WTO membership, which was problematic because that could eliminate the ability of right owners in one market to enter a new market with, for example, their trademark or other rights, and could also inhibit the ability of small and medium-sized companies to establish new brands that could otherwise have incorporated such terms. Another general point was the fact that these two proposals would allow for a notifying country to use its own country of origin protection as the basis for receiving protection elsewhere, which again would bypass national systems of other countries. All these features seemed to suggest an intention to set up a type of worldwide extraterritorial system of protection. His delegation failed to understand how such a philosophy could be reconciled with the notion that intellectual property rights were territorial and that rights had to be established and asserted under the laws of the country where protection was being sought.
