Geographical Indications: not all ‘champagne and roses’

Introduction: The relationship between geography and trade mark law is, in many people's minds, most clearly evidenced in a specific type of intellectual property right (IPR) known as the ‘geographical indication’. These instruments, which provide one kind of ‘label of origin’ for products, had their genesis in the agricultural and political milieu of eighteenth-century France. Perhaps because of this they have always been robustly championed by Europeans as exceptionally useful tools for defending the rights of local producers against the ever-present risk of the ‘genericization’ and ‘passing-off’ of their products by distant others. We now find ourselves, however, at a unique historical moment: one in which there is increasing pressure to universalize the use of geographical indications (GIs). This prospective universalization would be both geographical and epistemological in nature. Advocates from the European Union continue to argue vociferously within the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the globalization of production and consumption of specialty goods necessitates the development of a more extensive multilateral system for recognition of geographical indications. Compliance to such systems could be secured, they assert, through the creation and robust defence of a global registry of protected place names and associated products. They have also argued that the typology of goods that would attract the higher level of protection currently afforded only to wine and spirits be extended to include a range of other products including processed foods, beverages and even handicrafts.