112. The representative of Canada supported the comments of the representative of the European Communities. His delegation believed that the Secretariat paper was a comprehensive compilation of the issues and, as it had pointed out, the basic notions, principles and objectives contained in the TRIPS Agreement appeared to be relevant for digital technology and was a useful guidepost as to where to continue to go with this work. What the Council needed to consider in the context of electronic commerce was what were the basic notions, principles and objectives that the Council wished to see for electronic commerce. This was an issue which went beyond intellectual property, but necessarily had to be thought through as the Council needed to consider how those broad principles applied with respect to intellectual property issues. His delegation was still studying the question of which categories of issues needed to be addressed and how they should be prioritized. Some of the issues might be resolved by the right holders themselves and by the private sector through changes in technology that would allow them to enforce some of their rights in a way that could not currently be done. However, apart from those kinds of issues, the Council needed to identify the specific issues that governments themselves should and would want to address in terms of facilitating electronic commerce and facilitating the objectives of the TRIPS Agreement. Finally, he referred to another complication to which the European Communities had already referred, namely the horizontal nature of certain issues. By "horizontal" he meant issues that were either linked to other electronic commerce issues - jurisdiction being one of the issues which needed to be considered in the broader context of electronic commerce - and issues which touched upon more than one of the intellectual property rights. His delegation was also looking forward to the results of the work being done in WIPO and would like to avoid overlap. His delegation hoped that, by July 1999, there would be greater clarity on the issues concerned.
