The Concept of Generic Geographical Indication

Geographical Indication (GI) signifies an indication relating to the qualities, reputations and characteristics of the goods or products, where the quality of the product is solely contributable to the environmental factors and the people involved in the making of the goods or products. Thus GI grants the rights to the community, which indicate that the specified product consists of some quality, reputation and characteristics due to its origin from the specified geographical location.

The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement has defined the 'Geographical Indications Rights' (Article-22) as the exclusionary rights for the indicator identifying that the goods have been originated within the member nation territories, or area or region of that territory, where the reputation or quality of the goods is essentially contributable to the geographic origin of the place. The regulations of GI also vary from one country to another as many differences have been found out in the use of generic terms across the world.

The global trade has made it mandatory to harmonize the various approaches and methods which the governments use for registering the GIs in their respective territories. The journey started with the Paris Convention in the year 1883, followed by the more elaborative provisions of the Lisbon Agreement in the year 1958 for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their Registration. In the year 1994 during the conclusion of the negotiations on the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, all WTO members were decided to lay down certain standards for the GIs protection in their respective countries. The Article 22 of the TRIPS Agreement emphasize on the obligations of the government for providing legal opportunities within their territories for safeguarding the GI use and stopping the unauthorized use. If a geographical term is used as the common designation of a kind of product, rather than an indication of the place of origin of that product, then the term no longer functions as a geographical indication. Where this has occurred in a certain country, then that country may refuse to recognize or protect that term as a geographical indication.  For example, the term “cologne” now denotes a certain kind of perfumed toilet water, regardless of whether or not it was produced in the region of Cologne.
If a generic product name is widely used outside the true region of origin, the GI application can be challenged and invalidated.
For example “Feta cheese” which is a brained curd cheese made traditionally in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, but the name of ‘feta cheese’ is also used by other countries such as America. Another example of using generic GI is the “Champagne” which is originated from France, but many countries use the name of this GI in their vine product.  In many cases, terms had become generic in the new countries before appellation of origin protection had even been established in Europe.