60. The representative of New Zealand said that his delegation believed that the joint proposal put forward by Japan and the United States accorded with the system of registration and notification envisaged by Article 23.4 of the TRIPS Agreement. His delegation's support for this proposal was based on a number of factors. Firstly, the proposal did not introduce a further layer of obligations for Members. It was primarily an information register for Members. It would require participating Members to agree to refer to WTO lists of notified geographical indications when making decisions to register or otherwise protect geographical indications through their national legislation, a process which was consistent with the objectives of Article 23.4. Second, the proposal fully recognized Article 23.1 of the TRIPS Agreement, in which Members were entitled to implement, and had implemented, the obligations contained in the Agreement in relation to geographical indications in a variety of ways, all of which were entirely consistent with the TRIPS Agreement. Third, the proposal was entirely voluntary with no implications for those Members who decided not to participate in the system. Fourth, the proposal did not appear to impose any undue burdens, in terms of finances and resources, on the Secretariat or Members. Finally, it recognized that, if a participating Member had an objection to the listing of a geographical indication, any such objection would need to be pursued via the domestic jurisdiction of the Member which had listed the purported geographical indication. With regard to the EC view that the system to be established under Article 23.4 must, by necessity, be a multilateral register, he noted that the final line of Article 23.4 referred to "those Members participating in the system". He understood this to mean that the system did not by necessity have to apply across the board. The EC representative had insisted that the system had to add value and yet the first line of Article 23.4 read "In order to facilitate the protection of geographical indications for wines …" The word "facilitate" did not indicate that there was a necessity to add value or add extra obligations and rights to Members. He queried the EC representative's comment that its system was voluntary in nature and, in particular, he drew attention to Part V of the EC proposal entitled "Legal Implications". Whilst a Member's right to lodge a geographical indication in the proposed scheme was possibly voluntary, the voluntary nature ceased after one year, because one year after its notification, a geographical indication would become "fully and indefinitely protected in all WTO Members". That seemed to go beyond the voluntary nature of the scheme and beyond what Article 23.4 envisaged. He echoed the concerns of the representative of Australia about the resource implications of the EC proposal, given the fact that not only would Members have to be prepared to look at all notifications in the first year period and lodge objections, but also there would be resource implications in relation to potential disputes between opposing Members regarding geographical indications. He noted that the EC proposal referred to an appropriate mechanism that needed to be devised in this regard, but did not provide guidance as to what such a mechanism might entail.
