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products as a transitional form of protection for products that meet certain conditions. While Argentina has in place a system for granting exclusive marketing rights, recent court decisions in Argentina make clear that those rights are subject to a severe limitation that is not consistent with Argentina's international obligations. Argentina also appears to be in violation of the TRIPS Agreement for revoking regulations in 1998 that had provided 10 years of protection for confidential test data for agricultural chemical products. TRIPS requires WTO Members to provide data protection for such products, and further requires that Members enjoying a transition period ensure that any changes in their laws regulations, and practice during that transition period do not result in a lesser degree of consistency with the provisions of the Agreement.
The TRIPS Agreement requires that WTO members provide a patent term of 20 years from the date that the patent application was filed. This term must apply to all patents in force on January 1, 1996. Canadian law provides a 20-year patent term only for those patents filed on or after October 1, 1989; earlier patents receive only 17 years of protection from the date that the patent was granted. Canada therefore fails to provide a full 20-year patent term to a significant number of patents in violation of Articles 33 and 70.2 of the TRIPS Agreement.
The EU regulation governing the protection of geographical indications for agricultural products and foodstuffs denies national treatment with respect to certain procedures concerning the registration of geographical indications. Furthermore, the regulation does not provide appropriate protection for trademarks. USTR is concerned that U.S. companies' trademarks thus are not properly protected.
The initiation of these three cases will bring to 13 the number of IPR-related WTO complaints initiated by the United States.
In addition, Ambassador Barshefsky announced her concern regarding Egypt and Uruguay's compliance with Article 70.9 of the TRIPS Agreement, and her intention to initiate dispute settlement proceedings against these countries should they fail to swiftly establish a transparent regulatory system for granting exclusive marketing rights in a manner consistent with TRIPS requirements.
Over the past year, significant results have been achieved in several of the dispute settlement cases previously announced by Ambassador Barshefsky. In 1997, Ambassador Barshefsky announced initiation of WTO dispute settlement proceedings against Sweden, Ireland and Denmark. In 1998, Ambassador Barshefsky initiated dispute settlement proceedings against Greece and the European Union concerning rampant television piracy in Greece and their failure to comply with the enforcement provisions of the TRIPS Agreement.
