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

Ambassador D. Mwape (Zambia)
B NEGOTIATION ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A MULTILATERAL SYSTEM OF NOTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS FOR WINES AND SPIRITS
52. The representative of Cuba congratulated the Chairman on his election and expressed her thanks to the outgoing Chair, Ambassador Karen Tan, for the excellent work achieved. 53. She said that for her country it was important to have due protection of geographical indications at the national and international level. In Cuba, GIs were protected pursuant to Law 228 of 2002. Since 1996 Cuba had been a party to WIPO's the Lisbon Agreement, which sought to facilitate international protection of GIs, and had also subscribed to several international treaties in this area. 54. Having said this, her delegation wished to put on record certain essential matters that should be part of the negotiations on the establishment of a multilateral system of notification and registration of GIs, namely, the preservation of the territorial nature of intellectual property rights and the need for special and differential treatment that was precise, effective and operational. GIs should be granted in keeping with the principle of territoriality and on the basis of applicable laws. With respect to special and differential treatment, the needs of developing countries and least developed countries had to be taken into account in any negotiation. Fulfilling the Ministerial Declaration, and specifically paragraph 44 of the Doha Declaration, was extremely important. The establishment of a registration system should not signify additional excessive fees or administrative burdens and should be accessible for developing countries to the extent that they could use and receive benefits from such a system. It was her delegation's view that the five guiding principles enunciated by Ambassador Trevor Clarke in document TN/IP/19 should be observed in the negotiations, in particular principles three and four.
TN/IP/M/25