Sustainable Resources & Green Tech, E-Commerce On TRIPS Council Agenda

The agenda of next week’s meeting of the World Trade Organization council on intellectual property will include an item on sustainable resources and environmental technology, and a proposed discussion on electronic commerce. These are in addition to the usual list of agenda items.

The meeting of the WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) will take place on 7-8 June.

For several years, some countries have been proposing agenda item relating to intellectual property and innovation. Next week, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland and the United States have proposed to discuss sustainable resource and low emission technology strategies.

“Next week’s discussion will give delegations the opportunity to present national initiatives, policies, strategies, and legal framework that advance resource conservation and emissions reductions, and how technological innovation and IP features in such strategies,” one supporting delegate said. “Such strategies may be focused specifically on industrial, agricultural, consumer or other applications. Members will provide information on best practices, including regarding ways they have sought to meet energy demands.”

“Sparking technological innovation to respond to today’s environmental imperatives is obviously a challenge all countries face,” the delegate said. “This was also confirmed by UN members in December in the Paris Agreement on climate change, which states, ‘Accelerating, encouraging and enabling innovation is critical for an effective, long-term global response to climate change and promoting economic growth and sustainable development.’ Whether endeavouring to conserve fresh water, clean air, habitable and useable land or other natural resources, technologies that rely on recycling and that are adapted to renewable resources to produce and distribute energy that likewise keep carbon emissions low and that reduce waste are in great demand.”

The delegate continued: “A focus will be put on presenting IP rights strategies that WTO members have implemented to catalyze sustainable resource and low emission innovation. It will also be shown how governments have promoted IPR protection and awareness to develop and diffuse technology solutions, whether low- or high-tech, to mitigate environmental risks, including by single inventors, SMEs, larger companies, universities, and through collaboration between these diverse innovative communities. Likewise, how WTO members incentivised innovation through IPR to develop a diverse energy mix; to conserve fresh water, clean air and land, while guarding against associated risks, such as climate change, deforestation, drought, land loss, and pollution, among other environmental threats.”

Side Event

Alongside the Council meeting, an event on the same topic is being organised by the informally grouped “Friends of Intellectual Property and Innovation,” which includes the delegations of Australia, Canada, the EU, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States, according to a source.

The panel event focuses on how initiatives and regulations concerning the use of resources and emissions translate into the intellectual property space, in the form of national and regional policies, business models, or research institutes’ management principles, according to the event organisers. In particular, the panel is expected to look into the issue of how green technology is transferred in practice and how IP facilitates its dissemination.

Representatives of the European Patent Office, a Lausanne-based startup, General Electric, and a research institution in Germany are expected to speak at the panel.

Canada Suggests Item on E-Commerce

Canada, in a communication [pdf] dated 26 May, suggested that the Council start discussion on global e-commerce.

In its communication, Canada said that the Declaration on Global Electronic Commerce adopted by the WTO Ministerial conference of May 1998 “urged the General Council to establish a comprehensive work programme to address all trade-related issues relating to global electronic commerce.”

Later that year, the Council established a work programme on e-commerce and tasked the TRIPS Council to “examine and report on the intellectual property issues arising in connection with electronic commerce,” the document says, “including the ‘protection and enforcement of copyright and related rights: protection and enforcement of trademarks; [and] new technologies and access to technologies.'”

According to the document, formal TRIPS Council discussions on e-commerce issues took place between 1998 and 2003. In its communication, Canada called for countries to share their national experience and practices on IP and e-commerce issues “in light of the rapid growth in digital technology and telecommunications as facilitators of commerce across countries at all levels of development.”

Canada said it would like to present “a recent innovative law enforcement initiative addressing the sale of counterfeit trademark goods over the Internet.”

At the last session of the TRIPS Council in March, the chair remarked on the decision of the Ministerial Conference on e-commerce, and encouraged members to consider how best to resume work on the matter, according to the minutes of the meeting [pdf].

Non-Violation Complaints

The draft agenda also includes further discussions on so-called non-violation complaints, which relate to the situation “where countries can bring cases against each other if one feels that another government’s action or a specific situation has deprived it of an expected benefit, even if no agreement has been violated,” according to the WTO.

As agreed at the WTO Ministerial Conference last December, a moratorium providing that non-violation complaints cannot be brought under TRIPS was extended again and TRIPS Council members are expected to pursue discussions to find a permanent solution to this issue. In particular, at the last TRIPS Council, the chair called for “concrete suggestions or ideas on how the Council could best engage in intensified work on the examination of the scope and modalities for non-violation complaints with a view to finding a way out of the current cycle of extending the non-violation moratorium from one Ministerial Conference to the next,” according to the meeting report.

Other Items, 13 Observer Requests Pending

Separately, the TRIPS Council is expected to take note of notification of domestic IP and other regulatory changes in WTO members.

According to the last report of the Council, some 13 requests for observer status in the TRIPS Council by other intergovernmental organisations are pending.

The 13 pending requests are: African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP Group); Bioversity International; Conférence des Ministres de l’Agriculture de l’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre (CMA/AOC); International Organisation of Vine and Wine (Organisation International de la Vigne et du Vin, OIV); International Vaccine Institute; Islamic Development Bank (IsDB); Latin American Economic System (SELA); Organization of American States (OAS); Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC); Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); Secretariat of the General Treaty on Central American Economic Integration (SIECA); South Centre, and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

According to the report, in the past few years the Council has granted ad hoc observer status on a meeting-by-meeting basis to the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO); The Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI), the Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC); and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

At the October meeting, according to the report, a number of delegations reiterated their support for granting permanent observer status to the intergovernmental South Centre, the CBD, and the International Vaccine Institute, but no agreement could be reached.

Finally, TRIPS Council Chair Modest Jonathan Mero of Tanzania may make a statement and suggestions on revitalising TRIPs Council meetings and making them more productive, according to a source.