23. The representative of Australia said that the proposal tabled by Hong Kong, China confirmed his delegation's thinking that there was still time between this meeting and Cancún to encourage delegations to come forward with ways of assisting the Special Session in complying with its mandate. As had been underscored by Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, New Zealand and Canada, the mandate established the core principles on which Members had agreed to base their negotiations. The first principle related to the type of legal effect that the system should have on Members that decided to participate in it. In this regard, there was a clear recognition amongst delegations that the multilateral system should facilitate the protection of geographical indications for wines and spirits in accordance with Articles 22 to 24 of the TRIPS Agreement and not impose additional substantive legal obligations or confer additional legal rights on Members beyond those already contained in the TRIPS Agreement. Legal effect clearly would be an important issue which would determine the outcome of these negotiations. The second core principle related to participation. Article 23.4 provided that Members had a choice of whether or not to participate in the system and Members therefore should be free to choose whether they would make notifications to the system. This principle would be perfectly consistent with other comparable intellectual property treaties such as the Lisbon Agreement, the Madrid Agreement in the area of trademarks, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Members would also be free to choose whether they would use the system when making decisions about the recognition and protection of geographic indications, which were territorial in nature. Another principle against which Australia would be judging these negotiations was that the system to be established should be a system of notification and registration only and should not contain any procedure of negotiation or arbitration or any other procedure regarding decisions on opposition or other measures as to how geographical indications were territorially applied. Regarding the legal effect of the registration, his delegation was of the view that the Hong Kong, China proposal was inconsistent with the mandate: it changed the substance of the TRIPS Agreement. Regarding the Annex on cost estimates, his delegation also thought that, while the cost estimates would be useful to provoke participants to start thinking about the issue, this would probably be a gross under-estimate of the costs of the future system.
