76. The representative of Australia said that his delegation was looking at the issue of costs at different levels: costs in administering the system; costs to Members in implementing the changes; costs to producers; and costs to consumers. As far as the administration of the system was concerned, costs would depend on the kind of system to be established and the degree of procedural complexity. In the system proposed by Australia and several other Members, the cost would be negligible. Under the proposal put forward by another group of delegations, the costs would be very substantial. The second determinant in terms of costs would be the volume of GIs that would be notified.
77. Leaving aside the question of who should pay for these costs, he addressed the issue of costs to governments in implementing changes. As the proposal co-sponsored by Australia accommodated existing regimes, only minimal changes would be required. Under the other proposal, Members would, at the very least, have to examine every notification that was made. How many governments were presently in a position to set up a group of persons to examine every notification? The answer would depend on the number of notifications per country. Many countries did not have, at this stage, any mechanism to perform this operation and would have to establish new ones. It would be necessary to take into account the cost of putting into place new legislation, new administrative structures as well as the costs for human resources. Australia was concerned that the demandeurs were asking others to follow their way of protecting intellectual property rights - a very regulatory, detailed and intrusive system - and to go, for the first time in intellectual property law, from one system based on territorial application to a supra national one.
78. The cost to producers could be very significant, particularly for those countries who used terms which others believed to be their own. Nothing in the TRIPS Agreement said that a Member had the obligation to follow another Member's form of protection. Using the example of the term "vintage", he said that, if the EC were to register that term as a GI, Australia would have to enter a process of challenge and to come up with evidence showing that "vintage" was generic in Australia and could not be registered. He also understood that, while Australia might not have to protect that term, any other Member not having opposed it within the time-limit of 18 months would be obligated to give such protection and would have to stop the importation of all products bearing the term "vintage" and coming from Australia or any other Member which had opposed the registration of "vintage". He added that this example was not so hypothetical because the wine producing countries, particularly those newer competitive countries, were very sensitive on this subject and the likely implications were well known.
79. Turning to the issue of costs to consumers, he took the example of a non-wine product, Bulgarian feta. The Australian consumer at the present time benefitted from a diversity of Bulgarian, Australian, French, Danish, German, or Greek feta. Under the system proposed by the demandeurs, if Australia did not challenge the term "feta" as a generic term, it would be obliged to prevent "feta" from being used by any country, except Greece. It would mean that Australia would have to prohibit imports from Bulgaria and any other country, except Greece. He wondered how the consumer in Australia could get any benefit if there were only one cheese that could be called "feta" and the producers of all other countries would have to repackage and re-label their product to call it "white cheese" or whatever. So, the cost to consumers was one that was highly debatable. The other side claimed that this would prevent consumer deception, and would be beneficial to consumers. He thought that this was not going to be a "boom" for consumers at all.
