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

Ambassador C. Trevor Clarke (Barbados)
European Union
B.ii Meeting of 28 October 2009, p.m.
126. The representative of the European Communities said that TN/C/W/52 proposed only two consequences of the name being notified in the register. It would constitute prima facie evidence regarding the GI definition, and any genericness assertion must be substantiated. For both consequences, there would be the following scenarios. In the first one, the prima facie evidence was not upheld by the examiner on the basis of information provided by the challenging party; this would be the end of the story as far as the effect of the register was concerned. This scenario also applied to the case of genericness. Another situation – already occurring in real life – related to litigation in any country regarding whether a GI should be protected or not, regarding genericness or prior trademarks. In his view, this might be irrelevant to these negotiations in the sense that this type of situation already existed and would probably continue to exist.
The Special Session took note of the statements made.
TN/IP/M/23