50. The representative of Hong Kong, China said that in his delegation's view, there should also be legal obligations for Members to facilitate protection of GIs. With regard to the question of some form of substantive examination as to whether a GI met the criteria set out in Article 22.1, he said that, while he understood the general concern that the register should not be filled with claims which did not meet the criteria of protection, what made him question the procedure was that most Members accepted registration of, for example, petty patents, utility models and industrial designs on the basis of no more than a simple formality examination. If substantial and valuable patent rights could be accepted generally on the basis of a formality examination without any inquiry into whether the subject-matter met the criteria, for example, for patentability, which were extremely complex compared to geographical indications, he wondered why the Special Session needed to be more concerned about GIs on the register fully meeting the criteria contained in Article 22.1, and could not just accept that the most simple and easiest formality examination system could be an adequate basis for entering a GI on the register and any questioning of the validity of a registration or the conformity of a GI, with for example Article 22.1, would be left to local jurisdictions.
