111. The recent decision agreed at the Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires is the seventh time such extension of the moratorium is approved by Ministers, in addition to the initial five-year moratorium set in Article 64.2. It shows a continuous consensus by Members that such provisions suffer from lack of clarity.
112. Twenty-three years after the TRIPS Agreement was finalized, the ordinary dispute settlement procedure available to Members under Article 64.1 has proved itself adequate to ensure compliance with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement. It has been invoked and used with great success in the past and no concrete case of the necessity for extending the mechanism to NVSC was presented by demandeurs. In fact, the extension of NVSC to the TRIPS Agreement could pose additional and unnecessary burden on the dispute settlement mechanism, in light of the worrisome situation of the Appellate Body caused by one country, which is blocking the launch of the process to fill the vacancies of the AB.
113. Further, the applicability of NVSCs would endanger the use of flexibilities relevant to attain the objective of the protection of intellectual property as set out in Article 7 of the TRIPS Agreement.
114. In short, the application of NVSC to IP disputes would generate systemic imbalances and reduce the legal certainty of multilateral IP law. In light of the above, Brazil reiterates its understanding that non-violation and situation complaints should not be applied to the TRIPS Agreement.
