219. The Chairman recalled that, at its last meeting, the Council had taken up its annual review of technical cooperation. Given that some information from Members and other intergovernmental organizations were made available only a short time before the review, he had indicated that he would offer a further opportunity to make comments on that material. Since that meeting, the Council had received additional information from the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) (IP/C/W/549/Add.6).
220. As regards notifications of contact points for technical cooperation on TRIPS, since the Council meeting in October, updates to contact points notified earlier had been received from the European Union and Korea.
221. As regards LDC needs assessments, he recalled that paragraph 2 of the TRIPS Council's 2005 decision on the "Extension of the Transition Period under Article 66.1 for Least-Developed Country Members" provided that "with a view to facilitating targeted technical and financial cooperation programmes, all the least-developed country Members will provide to the Council for TRIPS, preferably by the 1 January 2008, as much information as possible on their individual priority needs for technical and financial cooperation in order to assist them taking steps necessary to implement the TRIPS Agreement". To date, such information had been received from five Members, namely Sierra Leone, Uganda, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Tanzania. At the Council's last meeting, Rwanda had complemented its earlier needs assessment with the proposed Rwanda Development and IP Capacity Building Project which intended to translate the needs assessment identified into a concrete technical assistance project (IP/C/W/548/Add.1). The needs assessment of Tanzania had also been presented to the Council's last meeting (IP/C/W/552).
222. He urged those least-developed country Members that had not yet provided information on their individual priority needs for technical and financial cooperation to do so.
