10th July 2003
TRIPS COUNCIL MAKES NO PROGRESS ON GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS
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At the special session of the Council for Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) on 2-3 July, Members failed to make progress in the negotiations on a multilateral register for geographical indications for wines and spirits. Members remained divided over two key issues, i.e. “legal effect” — whether Members should be required to protect registered terms — and “participation” — whether those who do not register a term are nevertheless obliged to protect registered terms (see BRIDGES Weekly, 12 June 2003). In his report to be submitted to the next Trade Negotiations Committee on 14-15 July (TN/IP/7, TRIPs Council Chair Ambassador Eui-yong Chung of Korea noted that he had been unable to prepare a revised draft without options as he had hoped. “In the light of the current state of the negotiations in the Special Session and of the Doha Development Agenda as a whole, delegations did not as yet feel in a position to be sufficiently flexible in their positions on the key issues of legal effects and participation to warrant [the Chair] tabling a new draft text at this stage,” the report concluded. The Chair is planning to hold further informal consultations and possibly convene another special session in the lead-up to the Cancún Ministerial. Trade sources speculated that Members were unlikely to finalise the negotiations by the Cancún meeting (as mandated in the Doha Declaration), and that progress could only be expected if the EU watered down its ambition on the register or was prepared to accept a trade-off in other negotiating areas, notably agriculture.
ICTSD reporting.
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