Minutes - TRIPS Council Special Session - View details of the intervention/statement

Ambassador Eui-yong Chung (Korea, Republic of)
C NEGOTIATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A MULTILATERAL SYSTEM OF NOTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS FOR WINES AND SPIRITS
14. The representative of Australia welcomed the approach suggested by the Chairperson. He thought the four questions posed should focus participants' minds on a systematic in-depth examination of the underlying concepts and practical implications of a multilateral system. Before proceeding as suggested, he wished to respond to the reference made in the first paragraph of document TN/IP/W/3 to the product coverage of the multilateral system. He recalled that the Special Session was negotiating a multilateral system for wines and spirits alone. There was no mandate for such a system to cover any other products, nor did Australia envisage that there was any interest in it being extended to other products. In the interest of moving things forward, the Special Session should adhere to the Ministers' mandate in paragraph 18 of the Doha Declaration. 15. He recalled that, under agenda item M (Article 24.2 review) of the regular session of the TRIPS Council, Australia was to make a presentation about the implementation of its obligations under the TRIPS provisions on geographical indications. Due to time constraints, this presentation was postponed to the next meeting. Referring to the list of questions that the EC had given to Australia, he welcomed the fact that Members were starting to engage in a substantive discussion on how they all implemented their obligations under the TRIPS Agreement and, particularly, how they distinguished between protection under Article 22 and that under Article 23. The United States and other countries had, on several occasions, raised the issue of the costs for governments, consumers and producers to have a system of registration along the lines of the proposal put forward by the EC and other Members. His delegation had also commented on the complexity and the intrusiveness of such a system. He gave two statistical examples of the implications of the proposal: first, an EC paper containing some 200 questions to Australia concerning its system of protection of geographical indications; and second, the 4,500 (and very soon, 6,000) EC geographical indications protected or registered under Australian wine and spirit legislation compared to the 97 Australian geographical indications.
TN/IP/M/2