Statement by India at the 27th session of WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications (SCT) delivered by Smt. Alpana Dubey, First Secretary (Economic), 18 September 2012

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 Thank you Mr Chairman,

 I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election as Chairman of the Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications. We trust that under your guidance we will be able to have a fruitful discussion on all topics of the agenda. We also thank the Secretariat for preparing the documentation for this session.
We would like to congratulate the Secretariat, who along with chief economist of WIPO   prepared the of study report on the impact of the draft Articles and draft Rules on Industrial Design Law and Practice with the time frame.

Harmonization of procedural aspect of design registration is the important norm setting exercise. India will like to recall its intervention made in the last session of the General Assembly and would like to reiterate that in keeping with the WIPO recommendation No.15 norm setting should take into account the different levels of development of the member states and the need to balance the costs and benefits.

However, the report does not fully addressed the core objective of the study i.e. the potential benefits, constraints and costs for SCT members, particularly Developing Countries, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Countries in Transition, of the application of the draft Articles and draft Rules on Industrial Design Law and Practice (documents SCT/26/2 and 3) with regard to applicants; national and regional offices administrative capacity; national and regional jurisdiction(relating to the changes that would need to be brought about in the legislation of the various members).

The study makes an assessment of the earlier treaties namely Trademark Law Treaty (TLT), Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks (STLT) and Patent Law Treaty (PLT). It may be mentioned that TLT, STLT & PLT have membership of 53, 32, 27  out of the 185 member states of WIPO respectively. India is not a member of the 3 treaties and therefore, comments could not have been provided by the Indian IP Office.
WIPO received only 143 responses of applicants/users in the world which is a miniscule number and is not even statistically significant for making any kind of conclusions on the impact a treaty is likely to have. 

The substantive issue is that the study is not as per the terms of reference approved by the Member States in the 26th session of the SCT. It appears that there has been no assessment in the study about the impact of the design system for SMEs; foster creativity, innovation and economic development and efficiency in Developing countries and technology transfer and access to knowledge.
The mandate of the 26th SCT has therefore not been fulfilled. Hence, India feels that the study is deficient and needs to be improved upon. The questionnaire based approach has not elicited sufficient response for any inference. As a way forward, WIPO could be requested to suggest approaches that could be followed to improve the study so that implications of this new instrument could come out more clearly.

The improved study could then be a basis for further discussion at the 28th session of the SCT. After which the member states could decide on the way forward for the SCT. An option at that time could be to organize regional meetings (this is expected to result in more focused attention) on the issue, but this should follow after the study is further improved upon.

The delegation of India hopes to contribute constructively to the discussions in the present session of the standing committee on trademarks, designs and geographical indications.

I thank You Mr. Chairman.

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