56. The representative of the United States regretted the fact that so many of the questions had been submitted significantly after the agreed deadline. It had made it difficult for his delegation to respond to the questions it had received. When replies were not made available before the meeting, there was very little time for analysing such replies, which made it difficult to have a meaningful dialogue. He asked Members to respect the deadlines agreed upon for submitting questions and replying to them. Turning to the proposed timetable for the review, contained in the informal note of 1 July 1996, he said that the question of which Members were subject to the different obligations under the TRIPS Agreement had regrettably never been fully determined. In his delegation's view, the list of Members obliged to meet the provisions of the Agreement was somewhat longer than the list contained in the note. His delegation had submitted questions to Members other than just those listed in the note. He objected to the fact that the Secretariat had not listed all the Members whose legislation should be reviewed, in alphabetical order. In his view, the category "any others" at the end of the list prejudged the status of some of those Members with respect to the obligations under the Agreement.
57. The record of the introductory statements made by delegations, the questions put to them and the responses given (including certain written responses provided after the meeting) will be circulated in the following documents:
IP/Q/AUS/1 Australia
IP/Q/CAN/1 Canada
IP/Q/CZE/1 Czech Republic
IP/Q/EEC/1 European Community
IP/Q/AUT/1 Austria
IP/Q/BEL/1 Belgium
IP/Q/FIN/1 Finland
IP/Q/FRA/1 France
IP/Q/DEU/1 Germany
IP/Q/GRC/1 Greece
IP/Q/IRL/1 Ireland
IP/Q/ITA/1 Italy
IP/Q/LUX/1 Luxembourg
IP/Q/NLD/1 Netherlands
IP/Q/PRT/1 Portugal
IP/Q/ESP/1 Spain
IP/Q/SWE/1 Sweden
IP/Q/GBR/1 United Kingdom
IP/Q/ISL/1 Iceland
IP/Q/JPN/1 Japan
IP/Q/LIE/1 Liechtenstein
IP/Q/NZL/1 New Zealand
IP/Q/NOR/1 Norway
IP/Q/SVK/1 Slovak Republic
IP/Q/SVN/1 Slovenia
IP/Q/ZAF/1 South Africa
IP/Q/CHE/1 Switzerland
IP/Q/USA/1 United States
58. After the consideration of the legislation of the above countries, the representative of the United States reiterated that his delegation had not accepted that there was a defined listing of countries that constituted developed country Members of the WTO. Therefore, his delegation had submitted questions to Members that it believed should be reviewed at this time, without prejudice to how the question concerning the status of the Members in general might ultimately be decided. These included Hong Kong, Israel, Korea, Kuwait, Singapore and Turkey. He expressed the hope that those Members would be prepared to reply to the questions put to them.
