15. The representative of the Secretariat said that document TN/IP/W/4 attempted to respond to the request made by the Special Session to have the Secretariat, with the assistance of the International Bureau of WIPO, prepare a factual background paper on existing multilateral systems of notification and registration. He emphasized that the document, although prepared with the assistance of the International Bureau of WIPO, was circulated on the WTO Secretariat's responsibility only. The International Bureau had contributed in providing two of the annexes of the document as well as in assisting the Secretariat with the remainder of the paper. With regard to notification systems, the paper focused, for reasons of practicality, on multilateral systems in place in the WTO and in the intellectual property field. With regard to the WTO notification systems, Annex 1 reproduced a listing of existing WTO notifications requirements. Annex 2 contained more detailed description of the various notification requirements under the TRIPS Agreement. With regard to other multilateral notification systems relating to intellectual property, the paper focused on those requirements in the context of WIPO; a summary made by the International Bureau of WIPO was reproduced in Annex 3. With respect to multilateral registration systems, the Secretariat had attempted to summarize the main features of the existing multilateral registration systems in a synoptic and comparable form, in the hope that it would facilitate the task of Members in appreciating these systems. Annex 4 contained a listing and a description, provided by the International Bureau of WIPO, of the WIPO multilateral registration systems. He added that the Secretariat might have inadequately treated in its factual note one system, namely the WTO Central Registry for Notifications (CRN), and would provide the relevant information on the CRN in the form of an addendum to document TN/IP/W/4.
