109. The Chairperson recalled that the General Council, at its meeting of 25 September 1998, had established a Work Programme on Electronic Commerce for the relevant WTO bodies, namely the Council for Trade in Services, the Council for Trade in Goods, the Council for TRIPS and the Committee for Trade and Development. Paragraph 4.1 of the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce provided that the Council for TRIPS should examine and report on the intellectual property issues arising in connection with electronic commerce, including issues concerning the protection and enforcement of copyright and related rights, the protection and enforcement of trademarks, and new technologies and access to technology. At its meeting in December 1998, the Council for TRIPS had heard information provided by a representative of WIPO on WIPO's activities relevant to electronic commerce. At that meeting, the Council had also requested the Secretariat to prepare a factual background note examining the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement relevant to paragraph 4.1 of the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce, which was also to provide information on the relevant activities of WIPO and other intergovernmental organizations. This note had been circulated in document IP/C/W/128.6 Furthermore, the Council had agreed to revert to the matter at the present meeting and invited Members to make contributions at any time. In considering what the next steps should be in approaching the issues referred to in paragraph 4.1 of the Work Programme, there seemed to be three main questions:
- Firstly, whether there was any further information that the Council would wish to obtain from the Secretariat, or from other intergovernmental or non-governmental organizations.
- Secondly, whether there should be any particular focus of further work in the Council. The Secretariat note aimed to cover comprehensively electronic commerce issues relevant to the TRIPS Agreement. The question before the Council was which of these issues, if any, needed to be the subject of further work in the WTO context. In this connection, it might be asked whether there were issues in regard to intellectual property that had not been sufficiently addressed in other fora, for example whether there were some trade related aspects that would need to be addressed in the context of the TRIPS Agreement.
- Third, procedurally, how the Council should carry forward its further work on this matter. He recalled that the General Council would carry out an interim review of the situation of work on this subject on 14 April 1999, which meant that the TRIPS Council should inform the General Council of the elements or status of its work at that time. Thereafter, there was the deadline of 30 July 1999, by which the TRIPS Council had to transmit its final report.
