169. The representative of Argentina said that the EC proposal would transfer directly to national governments all the country-by-country costs that currently were the responsibility of individual producers. This meant that the majority of countries, particularly developing ones, would have to assume all the costs of examining the notified geographical indications.
170. She further said that the reversal of the burden of proof would mean that all those producers, especially from countries with greater purchasing power, would save in litigation costs, because they would be able to litigate in those countries solely based on the protection given in their own territories. Producers of third countries would be the ones who would have to go to courts to defend their rights. The EC proposed system would grant supranational exclusive rights to some producers who would have an additional competition advantage over other competitors in third markets.
171. As to the submission of trademark search reports mandated in paragraph 9.7 of the EC proposal, she said that that paragraph foresaw a complicated structure of costs and fees, with two kinds of fees, namely a basic fee and an individual fee. The individual fee seemed to aim at covering the costs incurred by Members who had to produce the reports. Such a system would be a total novelty in multilateral registration systems. She failed to understand the rationale of that obligation. Was the WTO going to act as some taxing agency responsible for the redistribution of the fees to developing countries, who would be, in the end, those having to pay for such reports? She did not know how many LDCs and developing countries would be able to take on such costs. She wondered how much it would cost for developing countries to request a search report from the Swiss authorities dealing with geographical indications. While this might cost them thousands of Swiss francs, it would be much cheaper for Switzerland to ask Argentina, Jamaica or Brazil for a search report.
172. Finally, she said that the comparison between paragraph 6 of the joint proposal and paragraphs 4 to 6 of the EC proposal clearly showed that the former had many advantages over the latter in that it neither altered the balance of rights and obligations under the TRIPS Agreement nor generated burdens, in particular as far as developing countries were concerned.
