103. Item (ii) allows Contracting Parties, to require that an application for registration be filed in due form, or that a layout-design be registered, before protection is extended to a layout-design.
104. In conformity with suggestions made during the fourth session of the Committee of Experts, the application for registration or the registration may be required to be effected with the "competent public authority." Such an authority could be national, regional or worldwide (for example, an international register administered by WIPO). A regional or international register might become desirable if all or most countries required registration since, then, the creator would have to go to the expense and risks of fulfilling possibly differing formalities in numerous countries where protection is sought. Since Contracting Parties are not required. but merely allowed, by Article 7 to have a registration procedure, Contracting Parties could not be obliged by the Treaty to accept a worldwide registration in lieu of national or regional registrations. Nor would Article 7 require the establishment of an international register. It would merely allow such a register by virtue of the words "competent public authority," so that, should one be established after the Treaty entered into force, the Treaty would not have to be modified in order to permit the use of such a register.
105. The provisions in the present text of Article 7 are shorter than those in previous versions of the corresponding Article. Article 7 no longer deals in detail with the formalities that may be permitted in respect of a registration procedure. Only one such formality is dealt with in item (ii), namely, the materials that a Contracting Party may require to be filed with an application for registration for the purpose of identifying or disclosing a layout-design. In this respect, an alternative is offered. Pursuant to Alternative A, a Contracting Party could not require more than the material that allows the identification of the layout-design. If this Alternative (that is, Alternative A) were adopted, information on trade secrets not necessary for identification of a layout-design could be withheld. position corresponds to the practice adopted in a number of existing legislative instruments, to the view that the purpose of a registration procedure is to establish proof of ownership, and to the view that the possibility of withholding trade secrets encourages a greater number of applications for registration and a lesser number of secret users. According to Alternative B, a Contracting Party could require a copy or drawing of the layout-design to be filed. In consequence, even the portions of the layout-design that are considered to be trade secrets would be required to be included in the application. This position corresponds to the view that the purpose of a registration system is to achieve full disclosure of layout-designs in return for the grant of protection.