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Notifications under Article 63.2 back to top
Article 63.2 of the TRIPS Agreement requires members to notify the
laws and regulations made effective pertaining to the subject-matter of
the agreement (the availability, scope, acquisition, enforcement and
prevention of the abuse of intellectual property rights). The procedures
for the notification of national laws and regulations under Article 63.2
are contained in document IP/C/2 (download
Word,
pdf).
These procedures say that when a member is obliged to start applying a
provision of the TRIPS Agreement, the corresponding laws and regulations
must be notified without delay (normally within 30 days, except where
otherwise provided by the TRIPS Council). Any subsequent amendments must
be notified without delay after their entry into force — normally within
30 days where no translation is required and within 60 days where
translation is necessary.
The procedures make a distinction between “main dedicated intellectual
property laws and regulations” and “other laws and regulations”.
Document IP/C/2, paragraphs 6 and 9, and document IP/C/W/8 (download
Word,
pdf)
contain some guidelines for dividing the laws and regulations into these
two categories. Main laws and regulations have to be notified in
English, French or Spanish; other laws and regulations can be notified
in a member’s national language even if this is not one of those three
languages. Translations of laws and regulations must be accompanied by
the authentic texts of the laws and regulations in question in a
national language.
Distribution back to top
Only the texts of
main laws and regulations are
distributed in WTO documents, and only in the WTO language in which they
have been submitted.
Other laws and regulations are not distributed, but they can be
consulted at the WTO Secretariat. However, a notification is circulated
and this must include a list of their titles with a brief description of
their contents, according to the format contained in document IP/C/4
(download
Word,
pdf).
A model of a listing can be found in document IP/C/W/8 (download
Word,
pdf). In order to make the notifications more
user-friendly, some members have recently provided these lists and
descriptions for their “main dedicated intellectual property laws and
regulations” as well, when updating earlier notifications.
Notifications of laws and regulations under
Article 63.2 are
distributed in the
IP/N/1/ series of documents.
Full details of the document codes used can be found
here
These notification documents are available in the WTO’s Documents Online
database. More recently, the actual texts of the main laws and
regulations have usually been annexed to the notification documents if
they have been submitted as electronic files.
Previously, the texts were mainly received on paper, and were not
annexed to the notifications in electronic form. Instead, the electronic
versions simply ended with a note that the actual texts were in “offset”
form, meaning they were not available electronically in Documents
Online. However, those texts have now been scanned and are now available
in .pdf format in the Documents Online database.
Cooperation between
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the WTO plays an
important part in how notified laws and regulations are managed. Under
Article 2(4) of the
Agreement between the World
Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization,
the WTO Secretariat sends to WIPO’s International Bureau a copy of the
laws and regulations that WTO members have notified to the WTO
Secretariat under Article 63.2 of the TRIPS Agreement, in the language
or languages and in the form or forms in which they were received. The
International Bureau places these copies in its paper collection. WIPO
then makes the laws and regulations contained in its collection
available to the public in various ways, including by publishing them
on-line in its
Collection of Laws for Electronic Access (CLEA).
One mailbox for two organizations back to top
Since May 2010, WTO and WIPO member governments have been able to notify
their intellectual property laws to the two organizations simultaneously
with a single action. This is done through the the “WIPO-WTO Common Portal”,
or in full the World Intellectual Property Organization-World Trade
Organization Common Portal for Notification of Intellectual Property
Laws and Regulations.
The portal serves as an alternative electronic means of notifying
member’s legislation on intellectual property. It allows members to
submit legal texts simultaneously to the WTO — under Article 63.2 of the
TRIPS Agreement — and to WIPO — under Article 24(2) of the Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and Article
15(2) of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
This new portal does not replace the existing procedures established by
the TRIPS Council for receiving and processing notifications. Nor does
it change the administrative roles of either Secretariat. It merely
provides a simple alternative way of submitting legal texts through what
is effectively a single electronic mailbox.
The texts of intellectual property laws and regulations that WTO and
WIPO members send through this portal will be picked up and processed by
the WIPO and WTO Secretariats according to their standard procedures. In
case of the WTO, the texts received through the WIPO-WTO Common Portal
will be circulated according to standard procedures and placed in the
WTO Documents Online database.
Checklists of questions, and answers back to top
Given the difficulty of examining legislation relevant to many of the
enforcement obligations in the TRIPS Agreement, members have undertaken,
in addition to notifying legislative texts, to provide information on
how they are meeting these obligations by responding to a checklist of
questions (document IP/C/5: download
Word,
pdf).
Responses to these questions are circulated in the
IP/N/6– series of
documents.
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