69. The representative of Japan said that translation was not only a cost problem in the area of GIs. As a preliminary comment on the factual information provided by the Secretariat (TN/IP/W/4), he said that, except for the PCT system, the Lisbon Agreement for appellations of origin, the Madrid system for marks and the Hague Agreement for designs were considered to be international registration systems for applicants seeking national protection through the international system. Therefore, if the information on these systems seemed to be useful for the work of the Special Session, their purposes seemed, however, to be different from the purpose of the system at discussion. As one of the co-sponsors of document TN/IP/W/5, Japan thought it was important to consider two issues for the multilateral system, taking into account the meaning of Article 23.4 of the TRIPS Agreement. First, the burden for each Member, namely the burden of operating the system including operation costs and the resources: such a burden should be minimized because it must be clearly beneficial to not only governments operating the system, but also to the users of the system. Second, considering the various situations of each Member regarding the protection of GIs, for example, based on Article 1.1 of the TRIPS Agreement, each Member was free to determine how to protect GIs, so the legal system for the protection of GIs might be different from one Member to another. A legally non-binding and voluntary system, including opposition, should be established since it was considered to be consistent with the principles of the TRIPS Agreement as well as minimizing the administrative and judicial burden and cost for each Member.
