47. The representative of the European Communities thanked the Chair for the constructive suggestions on what kind of information should accompany a notification. His delegation would a priori have no problem providing as much information as possible regarding the determination of a term as a GI in the country of origin. The problem was rather that that might not be sufficient because providing information did not per se facilitate the protection of GIs. This information might be useful for examining authorities, although in the age of internet, in the case of the EC and other countries, all this information was already available online. This being said, even assuming that it would add value, it would only relate to the work of the examining authorities but not facilitate the protection of the GIs. The mandate was not about facilitating the examination of GIs or about facilitating the protection of trademarks, it was about facilitating the protection of the GIs. This being said, his delegation fully agreed with other Members that the register should not go as far as having extraterritorial effect as the EC had been wrongly accused of proposing.
48. With respect to the Australian question of whether the EC was questioning the exception of genericness, he said this had been discussed previously and his delegation's answers to this question could be found in paragraphs 35 and 61 of the minutes of the previous meeting of the Special Session (TN/IP/M/22). His delegation was simply saying that, since genericness was an exception, it should be substantiated when claimed. Some Members argued that, contrary to information received by the EC, this was not an issue, because nowhere were GI owners asked to actually show that their terms were not generic. In any event, the proposal to require substantiation when genericness was claimed would not change anything in those countries where right holders did not have to prove that their GIs were not generic, and would rectify an inadequate situation in countries where this was the case. This would not change the principle of genericness: it remained up to each Member's authorities to determine what was generic in their own territory, which, as currently, would continue to result in many different situations.
49. With regard to New Zealand's view that the proposed legal effect of prima facie evidence for meeting the definition of Article 22.1 would endanger prior trademark protection, he said that the proposed system did not change anything with regard to exceptions. The fact that a term might meet the GI definition did not mean that it had to be protected. Such a term might still not receive protection because of a prior trademark, because of prior use, or because it was deemed to be a generic term. Any one of these scenarios did not contradict the other.
