Dominican Republic Appeals WTO Plain Packaging Decision

The Dominican Republic has followed Honduras in appealing a decision by a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel that found Australia’s tobacco plain packaging law to be allowable under WTO rules. Cuba and Indonesia also had cases against Australia but so far have not appealed.

The details of the Dominican Republic’s appeal are not yet available from the WTO, and are expected in the coming days. The appeal, WT/DS441/23, will be found here when available.

The tobacco-producing Caribbean nation had filed a WTO case against Australia in July 2012, and focused on alleged trademark and geographical indications violations. The original filing, WT/DS441/1, is available here.

The WTO dispute settlement panel released its report in the case on 28 June (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 28 June 2018).

The WTO Dispute Settlement Body is scheduled to meet on 27 August, and the agenda showed planned discussion of the panel report in the cases of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Indonesia. That will be reduced to the two remaining report not appealed, Australian academic Tania Voon tweeted:

Three WTO #Plainpacks Panel Reports on agenda for adoption at DSB on 27 Aug in GVA. One's off the list, with the 2nd appeal (by DR). That leaves Indonesia and Cuba – here's hoping for a clean adoption on Monday. https://t.co/vwiWOi1Z8T

— Tania Voon (@taniavoon) August 24, 2018

Honduras filed its appeal on 19 July (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 3 August 2018).