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

Ambassador C. Trevor Clarke (Barbados)
B.ii Meeting of 28 October 2009, p.m.
87. The Chairman said the point made by the European Communities was a critical part of the debate and that there were wide differences of view on how that should be handled. He believed that taking the information into account could be done in various ways. As a first scenario, some Members would not want to look at the information, and others would look at it and ignore it, which one group of Members did not like to envisage. Another scenario could be that the consulting country would look at the information and would – to quote a delegation's comment made on a previous occasion – "seriously and honestly consider" the information as one of the elements the consulting country could bring into its domestic decision making process. The proposal made in TN/C/W/52 that there be a prima facie evidence that the notified geographical name was a GI unless there were proof to the contrary had met great resistance. He asked delegations whether there was any way to take the information into account other than to "seriously and honestly consider" it as part of the decision making process at the domestic level, or whether any Member would be inclined towards taking the information and using it unless there was proof to the contrary. For example, if a consulting country had proof to the contrary in its possession, and hence decided not to protect that GI, would that be the "end of the story"? Would the notifying Member have any recourse, or would it be necessary to provide for that Member the possibility of recourse? Recalling that the Special Session was committed to negotiating a register that was capable of "facilitating" the current TRIPS protection, without increasing it, he said that, on one side of the argument, there would have to be some consequences for a consulting Member if it did not take the information into account "seriously".
The Special Session took note of the statements made.
TN/IP/M/23