De Europese Commissie heeft recentelijk een studie gepubliceerd over geografische indicaties voor niet-agrarische producten. Tevens heeft de Commissie een public hearing gepland op maandag 22 april in Brussel, waar voor stakeholders de mogelijkheid bestaat om de Commissie te informeren over bestaande behoeften ten aanzien van dit onderwerp. Meer informatie over de public hearing hier.
Europese Commissie, Study on geographical indications protection for non-agricultural products in the internal market, final report 18 February 2013.
“The overall objective of the study was (1) to provide the European Commission with precise information on protected and potentially protected non-agricultural GI products in the 27 Member States of the EU1, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland and (2) to determine whether or not a unitary system of protection for non agricultural GI products at the EU level should be established. (...)
In the 31 countries, there is no harmonised approach when it comes to the legal instruments available for the protection of non agricultural GI products. The legal frameworks differ quite significantly in terms of scope, effect and cost of protection. Protection can be granted through consumer deception and unfair competition laws, trade mark laws, specific laws which protect individual non agricultural GI products and/ or sui generis GI systems.
Unfair competition and consumer deception laws are available to seek redress in all the countries, but they are barely used by producers. The protection granted under these laws focus mainly on the protection of consumers and requires producers or other stakeholders interested in the protection of the intellectual property (IP) rights to bring evidence, a process which can be both costly and uncertain. Passing-off actions are also possible but no recent case was found. (...)
However, not many producers have registered Community trade marks with OHIM. Trade marks offer the right holder with a positive and exclusive right on the use of the name. However, on the one hand, there is a limitation of rights conferred by a mark, notably the impossibility to prevent a third party to use the name in accordance with honest practices. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to secure word trade mark registration and the need to rely on figurative trade marks to protect the name of non agricultural products bearing a geographical indication. As a result, protection secured through a figurative or...