4. The representative of the United States said that in the discussions last year Members had agreed in principle to include so-called "road maps" in their notifications of laws and regulations under Article 63.2, which were to have served as correlation charts showing how a Member's national legislation related to and implemented the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement. His delegation had been preparing such detailed "road maps" but had noticed that notifications of other Members under Article 63.2 did not contain such correlation charts; instead, Members had been providing simple indexes of how Members' laws and regulations under general headings, such as 'Copyright' or 'Patents', implemented the general provisions of the TRIPS Agreement. He expressed his delegation's disappointment about this and hoped that Members would be willing to cooperate in working out more detailed "road maps" in the future. The United States was awaiting a signal from its trading partners indicating their agreement with the notification of detailed "road maps" and, at that time, would be happy to submit its own detailed "road map". He also made a point concerning Section 1, paragraph 3 of document IP/C/2 and said that Members had agreed, when adopting the text reflected in that document on 21 November 1995, that, as developing country Members implemented the obligations under the TRIPS Agreement in advance of their obligation to do so, they ought to notify, to the extent possible, such laws and regulations as soon as possible after their entry into force. His delegation wished to encourage all developing country Members updating their laws, as he understood many were doing, to notify those updated laws as soon as possible after their entry into force.
