158. The representative of Switzerland said that there was no reason to make a distinction between the legal effects of registration in Members who notify and in those who did not because the system to be set up would be a multilateral one with the sole objective to facilitate the protection that all Members, except LDCs, had already to offer, and not to increase such protection. If, as far as legal effects were concerned, the objective was not to increase the current protection and to enable all WTO Members to continue to have recourse at any time to the exceptions under Article 24 of the TRIPS Agreement, then this seemed to indicate that this Special Session would be fully within its mandate and was perhaps going in the direction of finding some solution to the issue of legal effects.
159. The proposal made by Hong Kong, China to create a presumption that would be rebuttable at any time with regard to all points seemed to be the approach to follow. As far as the basis on which this presumption would relate, her delegation considered that it should not only relate to definition and protection in the country of origin, as was proposed by Hong Kong, China, but also to the generic nature of a name or the misleading character of a homonymous name, as was proposed by the European Communities. The concept of territoriality would be fully respected for two reasons: first, each Member would have the possibility, in a system with reservations, to lodge a reservation; second, since the presumption was rebuttable, it would be possible to challenge the presumption at any time after the registration before the national courts. By contrast, the joint proposal provision that the legal effect of a registration would be limited to an encouragement of Members to consult a database would not fulfil the mandate to facilitate protection.
