31. The Chairman recalled that Article 4(d) allowed a Member to justify not extending an advantage accorded to the nationals of a country to the nationals of all other Members, as normally required by the m.f.n. clause, where that advantage derived from an international agreement related to the protection of intellectual property which entered into force prior to the entry into force of the WTO Agreement. The conditions for invoking this m.f.n. exemption were that the agreement in question was notified to the Council for TRIPS and did not constitute an arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against nationals of other Members. In his consultations he had obtained some feedback as to the nature of notifications that might be envisaged and as to their timing, but further discussion was clearly necessary. He proposed to pursue his informal consultations on the matter and report to the Council in due course.
