GIs will not be treated as ‘trademark’, EU intellectual property head says

Geographical indications (GIs) will not lose features that make them different from other Intellectual Property (IP) rights by moving competencies from the European Commission to the EU’s intellectual property office (EUIPO), its head told EURACTIV in an interview.

The latest revamping of the EU’s food quality scheme attracted criticism from food producers and member states, who would have liked to preserve the status quo of the geographical indications (GIs) framework.

The biggest cause of concern is the increased involvement of the EU’s intellectual property office (EUIPO) in dealing with GIs, with the Commission’s DG AGRI outsourcing some of its competencies on the matter.

“The issue is that under the umbrella of Intellectual property (IP) rights, you will find trademarks, patents for inventions, copyrights, designs, plant varieties rights, and trade secrets, but also geographical indications,” explained EUIPO’s executive director Christian Archambeau.

In particular, the main fear is that this would move away from a system focused on links to Europe’s geographic regions toward a ‘trademark approach’ since EUIPO is mostly known for being responsible for the registration of trademarks and designs at the EU level.

EUIPO has been working with the Commission on the matter since 2018, also contributing to the development of GIview, a free online database aggregating all registers for geographical indications.

“A sort of a mea culpa needs to be done by us and the Commission as at the beginning we have probably been not ambitious enough in advertising what we do and how we do it,” he said.

An objective of the EU executive in the reform is to give a proper legal basis to the informal cooperation with EUIPO that has taken shape over the years, also considering the limited human resources in DG AGRI and the increasing number of applications received.

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No other ambition

Besides the examination of filings, EUIPO officials also share their knowledge and expertise by organising webinars and conferences. They have recently cooperated with the Commission to expand GI implementation outside the EU.

According to Archambeau, the ‘”very good collaboration” with the Commission over the past recent years led to speeding up technical examination part of the application, which now takes just four weeks.

“The only noticeable difference with the previous period is that the backlog of applications that was present has disappeared,” he said, adding that in 2% of cases so far, Commission’s DG AGRI raises comments or required some changes instead of simply validating the work of EUIPO.

For Archambeau, the Commission’s proposal asks the EUIPO to do what the office is good at – namely, examination of the application, registration, promotion, and enforcement – while the Commission remains in charge of the policy area involving the EU’s farming subsidies and the green transition.

“We have absolutely no other ambition, and the proposal is clear: our involvement is technical. We focus on the IP angle to make the registration procedure a and the defence of the IP rights stronger,” he said.

EU unveils revision of food quality scheme amid push to change the minimum

The latest revamping of the EU’s geographical indications (GIs) policy was marked as “an evolution” without substantial changes but still ruffled the feathers of food producers and some member states, who would have liked to preserve the status quo of the framework.

GIs will remain collective rights

Producers’ suspicions over a potential ‘trademark approach’ in dealing with GIs remains, but Archambeau dismissed them.

“Putting it simply, GIs identify goods originating from a particular place and having certain quality characteristics due to their origin, while the trademark identifies a good or service originating from a particular company,” he explained.

This means that trademarks are individual rights, and the owner can even license its use to someone else, while GIs are collective rights accessible to producers who want to follow the rules of production for that GI and in the geographical area concerned.

“And GIs will remain a collective right,” the EUIPO boss said, adding that this difference is crucial and needs to be considered.

He pointed out that the approach for examining GIs differs significantly from the one applied for trademarks, with 25 fully trained and dedicated EUIPO examiners.

An example is how EUIPO deals with the concept of protection from the evocation of the place in which products are made, which is typical of the GIs.

“We regularly refuse trademark applications or limit the scope of trademark applications because of questions of prior GI rights,” he said.

MEPs concerned by 'trademark' approach for new geographical indications rules

European lawmakers expressed concerns over a change of course in the EU’s geographical indications (GIs) policy, drifting away from current rules and particularly European Commission supervision.

Online protection to be improved

The EU executive recently presented member states with two possible scenarios for EUIPO involvement, one where only administrative tasks would be delegated to EUIPO and another where the Commission would provide its agricultural expertise on those tasks as and when needed. 

“Some of the proposals that are on the table are certainly about what we do now, the status quo,” Archambeau said, adding that there is also the possibility for EUIPO to do more like happens with trademarks and designs with cooperation programmes with member states.

“We have helped member states to significantly reduce the time required to file trademarks and designs at the national level by helping with capacity-building tools cooperation,” he said.

These cooperation mechanisms can also be transposed to the realm of geographical indication, according to Archambeau. “The more involvement from the EUIPO into the process, the simpler the procedure will become,” he said.

The other field in which the EU’s intellectual property agency could contribute is protection against counterfeited products sold online.

Online marketing has helped European food companies during the pandemic, with structural modification of their business model but also with the creation of new services.

“Of course, this change also provided opportunities for the bad guys,” said Archambeau, who added that EUIPO is currently in contact with some of the major global marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba to help tackle the online counterfeit problem.

“One of the most important things is to know whether a product online is genuine or not,” he explained, adding that the starting point is to set up a transparent register of registered rights to collect information on who is the manufacturer of a registered product and what are its characteristics.

“If we get the responsibility for GIs, we would, of course, do it for GIS as well, but it has to be part of our mission. We need a legal basis to be able to do that,” he concluded.

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[Edited by Alice Taylor]