16. The representative of Canada said that the language of Article 23.4 was clear on the nature of the system to be implemented as a result of the current negotiations. It was simply for wines eligible for protection in those Members participating in the system. This wording clearly implied that it was not the intention of negotiators to have a mandatory registration system. Her delegation simply did not envisage how any other interpretation could be given to Article 23.4. The voluntary nature of the system was a crucial element of a future system of notification and registration. While the systems described in the Secretariat's note of September 2002 (TN/IP/W/4) could not come into force in the territory of a WIPO member until that member had decided to ratify them, that characteristic would not apply in the context of the WTO since TRIPS obligations applied to the entire WTO membership. Besides, non-wine producing Members did not stand to gain anything from a system of notification and registration for wines and spirits. It would be unfair and unacceptable to impose mandatory substantial new obligations and costs on them, which the system proposed by the demandeurs would do. Such a danger stemmed from the legal prescription introduced in the system proposed by the demandeurs on the use of Articles 22.1, 24.4 and 24.6: if a Member did not use these exceptions within the first 18 months following the notification of the name, it would forever be foreclosed from doing so. As a result, if a Member for any reason of its own did not oppose the registration of names that were generic in their territories within 18 months following the initial notification, the notifying Member would then be able to register its GIs and producers of other Members would not be allowed to raise the exceptions in Articles 22.1, 24.4 and 24.6. Non-participating Members who considered those names to be generic would be precluded from trading the good under its rightful name with those other Members who had always considered the name to be generic. The end result would be a possibility of an undue disruption in the normal trade relations of two Members and consequently trade distortion. Her delegation believed that such results were certainly not those intended by the Uruguay Round negotiators when they drafted Article 23.4.
