126. The Chairperson recalled that, at the last meeting, the Council had had an initial exchange of views on how the review of the provisions of Article 27.3(b) of the Agreement should be carried out. In the light of informal consultations on the matter, it had been agreed to initiate the review process through an information-gathering exercise. First, those Members that were already under an obligation to apply Article 27.3(b) had been invited to provide information on how the matters addressed in this provision were presently treated in their national law. Other Members had been invited to provide such information on a best-endeavours basis. The target date for the provision of this information had been 1 February 1999. Second, while it had been left to each Member to provide information as it saw fit, having regard to the specific provisions of Article 27.3(b), the Secretariat had been requested to provide an illustrative list of questions relevant in this regard in order to assist Members to prepare their contributions. Third, the Secretariat had been requested to contact the FAO, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and UPOV, to request factual information on their activities of relevance. It had been understood that this information-gathering would be without prejudice to the nature of the review provided for in Article 27.3(b). Once this information was received, the Council would revert to the question of whether any further information might be requested from the Secretariat. At the meeting in December, the delegation of Mexico had indicated that it would submit a non-paper on certain items that it would like to see included in the illustrative list to be prepared by the Secretariat. This non-paper had been circulated to Members in an informal document, No. 6954 of 8 December 1998. The Secretariat had taken these suggestions into account in preparing the illustrative list, which had been circulated in document IP/C/W/122. To date, information had been received from the following Members in response to the Council's request: Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, the European Communities and their member States, Hungary, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, the United States and Zambia. The contributions from those Members were available in documents IP/C/W/125 and Addenda. The Secretariat had also received a joint communication from the delegations of Canada, the European Communities, Japan and the United States (document IP/C/W/126); in this communication, these delegations had informed the Council of the method that they would use in structuring the information solicited by the questions in the illustrative list prepared by the Secretariat, and encouraged other delegations to use the same method. Of the three intergovernmental organizations that had been requested to provide information, to date, responses had been received from the Office of UPOV and from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The information from UPOV was available in document IP/C/W/130 and that from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity would be circulated in document IP/C/W/130/Add.1.
