Actas - Consejo de los ADPIC - Ver detalles de la intervención/declaración

Ms Irene Young (Hong Kong, China)
World Trade Organization
2 2 NOTIFICATIONS UNDER PROVISIONS OF THE AGREEMENT
14. This brief interim report supplements the series of briefings the Council has received over recent sessions on this elaborate project, which represents a once-in-a-generation overhaul of how we manage TRIPS documentation and how we serve Members in making this information accessible and practicably workable. The project, I am glad to report, is in its late stages, having been assisted and guided by the feedback provided by interested delegations, whom we thank, and who took part in informal briefing and demonstration sessions and gave us very helpful feedback and suggestions. 15. While this is a brief interim report, we expect to have a significant advance to report at the next meeting of the Council. At this stage, the e-TRIPS project has almost completed the full digitisation of the entire range of TRIPS-related notification and review materials. We are currently in the process of validating and closely checking the thousands of individual records concerned and intensively testing the prototype on-line notification tool. We are also preparing a draft web gateway that will greatly facilitate access to and use of all TRIPS-related materials by WTO Members. We have just secured the necessary ad hoc resources to take forward the final stages of implementation both of data validation and upload of the data onto the information management system, on the input side, and for the development and elaboration of an accessible gateway, for the effective use of these data. We are therefore reasonably confident of reaching the final stages of the project in the course of this year, and we will be again reaching out to interested delegations to consult with us both for demonstrations of the current advanced prototypes and for feedback on how to ensure this new facility best meets the practical needs and requirements of Members, both Geneva-based delegates and officials in capital. We certainly welcome the interest and involvement of any interested delegations.
The Council took note of the notifications and the statements made.
3. The Chairperson invited the Secretariat to provide an update on the legislative measures that had been notified by a number of Members since the Council's meeting in March 2017.

4. The representative of the Secretariat took the floor.

5. The Chairperson invited delegations that had notified a new or revised legislative measure, or given responses or updates to the enforcement checklist, to briefly introduce the changes.

6. The representatives of the European Union; Hong Kong, China; Switzerland; and Norway took the floor.

7. The Chairperson said that, as previous Chairpersons had already noted, notifications to the Council had not been keeping up with the actual development of laws and regulations relating to the TRIPS Agreement. She recalled that Article 63.2 was not a one-off requirement, but required Members to notify any new or amended laws. Therefore, she urged Members to complete any outstanding initial notifications and to keep up to date with notifications on subsequent amendments. The same applied for the Checklist of Issues on Enforcement, which had been established by the Council as an element of Members' notification obligations.

8. The Chairperson invited the Secretariat to provide an update on the development of e-TRIPS, the online platform for filing and consulting notifications and other Council documentation.

9. The representative of the Secretariat briefed Members on the development of e-TRIPS.

10. The Council took note of the notifications and the statements made.

IP/C/M/86, IP/C/M/86/Add.1