1. The Chairman drew attention to the Secretariat's updated note reflecting the status of the notifications received from these Members so far (JOB(03)/102). The showed from which of the Members in question notifications had been received by 26 May 2003. Two newly acceded Members, namely Armenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had been added to the list. Since the Council's meeting in February 2003, the following notifications had been received: Belize had notified its new intellectual property laws and related regulations – the same laws had been notified in the year 2000 in the form of pending bills; Mauritius had notified its new laws on industrial property rights; and Egypt had notified its unified law on the protection of intellectual property rights. Since the compilation of the updated note on 26 May 2003, India had notified its new rules on semiconductor integrated circuits layout-designs, trademarks, and on geographical indications. From the 81 Members in question, there were now five who had not yet submitted any notification concerning their implementing legislation, apart from the two newly acceded Members referred to above, namely Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Swaziland, and the United Arab Emirates. Notifications from a number of other Members were incomplete.
2. The Chairman said that, as requested by the Council at its previous meeting, he had written to those Members that had not been represented at that meeting and with unfulfilled notification obligations under Article 63.2 of the Agreement. Recalling that pursuant to Article 63.2 of the Agreement the notifications of the laws and regulations in question were generally due as of 1 January 2000, he urged all Members with unfulfilled notification obligations to submit the outstanding material without delay.
