WTO: 2015 NEWS ITEMS

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: INFORMAL MEETING


NOTE:
THIS NEWS STORY is designed to help the public understand developments in the WTO. While every effort has been made to ensure the contents are accurate, it does not prejudice member governments’ positions.

MORE:
> intellectual property (TRIPS)
> TRIPS issues explained
> TRIPS and health
> TRIPS and biodiversity
> geographical indications
> all TRIPS issues
> TRIPS news

The Secretariat presentation was designed to help delegates — many of them recently assigned — understand what happened in the talks, which started in 1997, but have been largely inactive since early 2011 when the present draft was produced. That draft, described as a “composite” text, contains numerous options reflecting divergent positions among members.

 

Waiting for a clearer picture

Geographical indications are place names or other terms used to identify the origin and quality, reputation or other characteristics of products. The negotiations in the WTO are about creating a multilateral register for geographical indications used for wines and spirits.

Members have long been divided over a number of issues, particularly on participation in the “voluntary” register and the legal implications for other members when one country registers a term (explained here). Those differences remain and were reflected in some of the comments in this meeting.

In 2001, the talks were brought into the broader Doha Round negotiations. The latest meetings are part of members’ overall effort to devise a work programme by July this year for completing the round (pdf). However, in the last informal meeting in December 2014 — only the third meeting since the draft was produced in 2011 — speakers on both sides of the debate repeated their view that hard talking would have to wait until a clearer picture emerges in other key subjects in the Doha Round as a whole. Some reiterated this view in this February 2015 meeting.

The Secretariat’s presentation covered the talks in some detail from its origins in Article 23.4 of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It included efforts to broker a deal as part of a broader Doha Round package in July 2008 — which broke down because of deadlock in other subjects — and the successful production of single draft text in 2011 even though it reflected many differences among members.

 

Unchanging positions

The few members that spoke broadly repeated their diverse positions, including on the nature of the register and on whether or not these negotiations should be linked to two separate issues known as “GI extension” and “TRIPS and CBD”. Some countries link these issues; others object, arguing that the issues are separate and that the negotiations should stick to the mandate of a register for wines and spirits.

“GI extension” is a proposal to extend to other products, the higher level of protection currently given to wines and spirits (a name must be protected even if its use does not confuse consumers) . Some members have proposed that the register should be expanded to include the other products coming under “GI extension”.

“TRIPS and CBD” includes a proposal to amend the TRIPS Agreement so that patent applicants are required to disclose the country of origin of genetic resources and traditional knowledge used in the inventions, evidence that they received “prior informed consent” (a term used in the UN Biological Diversity Convention or CBD), and evidence of “fair and equitable” benefit sharing.

Speakers included Ecuador, Switzerland, EU, China, US, Peru.

The negotiations meetings are officially called “special sessions” of the TRIPS Council. In December 2014 the chairperson proposed that the first meeting in 2015 should be an informal information session. He consulted members in early February and reported in this meeting that most told him they wanted information on past work in the negotiations.

 

Next

Negotiations meeting: To be announced
Deadline for Post-Bali work programme: July 2015

Chairperson: Ambassador Dacio Castillo, Honduras

 

More

Jargon buster 

• CBD

• GIs

• modality, modalities

• Paragraph 6 system

• Special Sessions

• TRIPS

> More jargon: glossary

RSS news feeds

> Problems viewing this page?
Please contact [email protected] giving details of the operating system and web browser you are using.