Handler, Michael --- "Rethinking GI extension" [2016] ELECD 305; in Gangjee, S. Dev (ed), "Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Geographical Indications" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 146

Book Title: Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Geographical Indications

Editor(s): Gangjee, S. Dev

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201300

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Rethinking GI extension

Author(s): Handler, Michael

Number of pages: 37

Abstract/Description:

It is well accepted that the final form of the GI provisions of the TRIPS Agreement represented a messy, politically expedient compromise between the EU and the US, designed largely so that the Agreement, which was otherwise so mutually beneficial to those parties, could come into being. Nowhere is this compromise more evident than in the dual minimum standards of GI protection set out in Arts 22 and 23. Under Art 22.2, WTO Members are under a general obligation in respect of other Members’ GIs to prevent: (a) the use of any means in the designation or presentation of a good that indicates or suggests that the good in question originates in a geographical area other than the true place of origin in a manner which misleads the public as to the geographical origin of the good; [and] (b) any use which constitutes an act of unfair competition within the meaning of Article 10bis of the Paris Convention (1967). Nothing in the TRIPS Agreement stipulates how Members are to afford such protection under their domestic laws.