64. The representative of Argentina said that she failed to understand how the EC proposal would not affect the principle of territoriality by making it impossible for a Member which had not lodged a reservation to claim at the national level that a term was generic. The practical effect of such a system was to make Members renegotiate the current exceptions under the TRIPS Agreement, an unprecedented feature not found in relation to other forms of IPRs, such as patents and trademarks.
65. As to the issue of bilateral negotiations under the EC proposal, she said that her delegation did not share the interpretation of Article 24.1 of the TRIPS Agreement put forward by the European Communities. If the mandate in Article 23.4 of the Agreement included bilateral negotiations, such a provision would have been included there and not, as was the case, in Article 24.1. Additionally, the provisions in Articles 23.4 and 24.1 could not be combined, as intended by the European Communities, to justify the existence of a dispute settlement mechanism within their proposal. Such a mechanism already existed in the WTO and applied to all WTO disputes, including those related to the TRIPS Agreement.
