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

Ambassador C. Trevor Clarke (Barbados)
United States of America
B.i Meeting of 23 October 2009, p.m.
50. The representative of the United States recalled that with respect to the Chair's second question her delegation agreed that the system of registration could not be so minimal a potential benefit that it did not facilitate protection. It would, however, exceed the mandate to insist on increasing substantive protection of GIs, particularly at the expense of other IP right holders and users of generic terms. The mandate directed Members to find procedural ways aimed at the protection of GIs in domestic systems. Accordingly, any "significance" or "weight" that a domestic authority afforded to a term on the register would have to be consistent with its domestic laws. Prescribing how a domestic authority should consider a term on the register and what, if any, weight should be afforded to the term, presumed to dictate an outcome and therefore exceeded the mandate under Article 23.4. 51. She recalled her delegation's position that the system should require participating Members to consult the multilateral system. As New Zealand, Guatemala and other Members had indicated, Members' discussions should focus on how national authorities used the information on the register in their existing domestic system rather than engaging in a discussion of what kind of substantive weight or significance authorities should give a registration. The United States agreed with the points made by New Zealand that the TRIPS Agreement should not predetermine which facts had greater weight than others and that Members had to retain the ability to balance information on the register with information from any other sources. In contrast, the EC proposal would require that more evidentiary weight be afforded to findings by authorities in a notifying Member than to those by another Member's domestic authorities making decisions regarding protection and registration under its own national law. This was unacceptable to her delegation. 52. In order to move forward in a way consistent with the mandate under Article 23.4, Members should focus on developing a useful and meaningful mechanism to facilitate protection of GIs. For the United States, this system would provide a useful reference that would facilitate the work of examining attorneys by providing a central depository for relevant information, a resource that did not currently exist.
TN/IP/M/23