A Report on Protection and Control of Geographical Indications for Agricultural Products in the European Union Published

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The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) published a report titled “Protection and Control of Geographical Indications for Agricultural Products in the European Union”.

The report is based on data provided to the EUIPO by the EU Member States’ national authorities that have competence for quality policies in the field of agriculture and agri-food and on complementary information from open sources. The main objective of the study is to provide better knowledge of the control and protection systems for geographical indications in the EU Member States, through the mapping of all competent authorities and the procedures in place, including enforcement measures against infringements.

Consequently, the report provides a general overview of each national control system for foodstuffs and agricultural products, wines, spirit drinks and aromatised wine drinks and a comprehensive inventory of all national competent authorities and control bodies in the EU Member States, as well as some useful information for geographical indication users to help them in seeking protection against infringements. An overview of the protection system for geographical indications established in the Republic of Croatia is given on p. 207 - 221 of this report.

Approaches to control implementation for geographical indications adopted by the EU Member States are diverse in terms of level of detail and extent, although still within the common EU legal framework. The diverse economic value of agri-food geographical indications in each national economy also plays an important role in this, significant factors being the development degree of domestic production and general consumption of high quality products.

Member States need to take corresponding administrative and legal measures in order to prevent unlawful using of products with geographical indications of origin produced or placed on their national market, and protection procedures are enacted ex officio. In addition hereto, research has shown that the majority of EU Member States has the legislation with criminal legal provisions for major cases of infringements of geographical indications of origin rights.

The summary of the study in Croatian is available at the following link.

The entire study is available at the following link.

 

Datum novosti: 18/12/2017