14th February 2007

MEMBERS PICK UP WHERE THEY LEFT OFF ON GIs, TRIPS-CBD - STILL STUCK

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WTO Members remain divided on how to address geographical indications and the relationship between biodiversity conservation and intellectual property protection, even though discussions are set to pick up as the Doha Round negotiations fully resume after a gap of six months.

Both ‘outstanding implementation issues’ have been the subject of informal consultations conducted by WTO Deputy Director-General Rufus Yerxa. Delegates discussed how to address them at an informal meeting on 13 February.

Governments are debating whether to extend the higher level of geographical indication (GI) protection currently accorded to wines and spirits to other products. Sources report that the EU, India, Sri Lanka, and Switzerland called for negotiations to develop an agreement on GI extension. This met with opposition from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan and the US, which argued that there was no mandate for doing so.

The EU and Switzerland believe that commercial opportunities arising from extending GI protection to products such as ‘Parma ham’ could help compensate their farmers for liberalisation under the Doha Round. Both delegations had earlier reiterated their demands on GIs during a 9 February session of the agriculture negotiating committee. Most ‘new world’ countries, such as Argentina, Canada, and the US, have few well known GIs, and remain adamantly opposed to extension. Indeed, at the agriculture meeting, Argentina questioned why countries were referring to the issue in the farm trade negotiations.

Well-established fault lines also reappeared on the issue of how best to minimise the granting of ‘bad’, or erroneous, patents incorporating naturally-occurring genetic resources without recognition or compensation (see , 7 June 2006).BRIDGES Weekly Countries including Bolivia, Brazil, China, India, and Norway called for negotiations to amend the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in order to make it mandatory for patent applicants to disclose the use of any biological resources or associated traditional knowledge in their inventions. Argentina, Canada, Korea, Japan, and New Zealand said that this would be premature; they have broadly argued in the past that changing WTO intellectual property rules was not necessary to pursue the objective.

Over the next two weeks, Yerxa will meet with ambassadors and intellectual property negotiators from individual delegations to determine how best to proceed on both issues.

In a separate development, the TRIPS Council was scheduled to meet on 13-14 February.

ICTSD reporting.