53. Recalling some of the earlier interventions made by his delegation at this meeting, the representative of the United States expressed concern with the provision of any sort of translations in the notification system, particularly in view of the impact it might have at the national level. It should be recognized that decisions made concerning protection based on translations must be made by the courts in light of consumers in the country where protection was sought, which was a fundamental issue related to the principle of territoriality of intellectual property rights. In that light, he did not see the need for translations, even into the working languages of the WTO. The way the Joint Proposal Group envisioned this in its proposal was that the notification would be made in English, French or Spanish and the geographical indication itself would be identified as it appeared on the wine or spirit good in the territory of that notifying Member. This would be the only information required for the system. Any other information provided in the notification, such as translations or any increased scope of protection that would need to be applied would be handled according to the national law as for any application made at the domestic level.
54. He said that his delegation also shared some of the concerns expressed by Japan with respect to transliterations, although as he had mentioned previously, he believed that there was some difference with regard to translations. For example, there might be room to envision transliterations, for information purposes, when terms were written in characters other than Latin characters. This was, however, different from the issue of translations, which was specifically addressed in Article 23.1, and would raise great concern about the scope of protection that might be envisaged under the system. He understood the European Communities' comments on this issue and how this would make sense from their viewpoint, given the fact that their proposed system would envision extraterritorial legal effects, including mandating the protection of certain terms and their translations. This was not, however, how his delegation read the mandate of Article 23.4, which was to facilitate, and not to increase, protection.
