Apr 7, 1989
TRIPS – DUNKEL’S NEW TEXT SEEN AS MORE PARTIAL TO U.S.
GENEVA, APRIL 5, BY CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN. – GATT Director-General Arthur Dunkel presented Wednesday evening a new text on the issue of intellectual property which third world delegates said leaned even more to the viewpoint of the United States and industrial nations, and ignored third world concerns. At a meeting Wednesday night of the informal group of third world countries in GATT, a number of delegations spoke up sharply against the new text. Over a dozen countries reportedly spoke and these included Egypt, Argentina, Yugoslavia, India, Brazil and Colombia. While in his previous text, Dunkel had said the negotiations "shall in particular address" a number of issues including standards and norms on intellectual property, in his new text, Dunkel said that negotiations "shall in particular encompass the following issues". Given the disputes among the participants on the scope of the Uruguay round mandate, and the general view of third world delegates that substantive norms could not be negotiated in the Uruguay round and in GATT, Dunkel’s use of "shall encompass" amounted to a reinterpretation of the mandate, several third world delegates later explained. While Dunkel’s earlier text had said the issue of "standards and principles concerning availability and scope of intellectual property rights", should be negotiated, his new text called for "adequate standards and principles" to be negotiated. On Tuesday at a press conference, Brazilian delegate, Amb. Rubens Ricupero, who is also chairman of the informal third world group in GATT, had referred to the feelings of imbalance in the Dunkel’s texts among third world countries and had characterised the Dunkel text as "a table with one leg (that on TRIPS) longer than the other three and hence unstable". A third world delegate recalled Wednesday night this description and said: "Dunkel has now made the leg longer". Third world delegates said Tuesday night those intense consultations were to take place Wednesday night both on agriculture and on TRIPS.