A geographical indication can be regarded as a beautiful woman who is blessed by God. If she gets her, she will get the happiness in her dreams. The motivation for profit drives the development of the geographical indication industry. In the process of development, we encounter Issues regarding the use of geographical indications.
China’s geographical indications have three carriages, namely one each for the former General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the former State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the former Ministry of Agriculture. It's like a girl has three fathers. They each find a son-in-law for their daughter, and each promises a dowry to their son-in-law. Translated into geographical indication jargon, “father” is the competent authority, “son-in-law” can be regarded as the geographical indication right holder, and “dowry” is the scope of protection of the geographical indication.
Judging from the chronological order of the three "fathers", quality inspection came first, industry and commerce came later, and the Ministry of Agriculture came later. The three "fathers" have different standards for choosing their sons-in-law. The quality inspection is relatively picky and the review standards are strict. Industry and commerce are "much more open-minded" and can do almost anything. When the Ministry of Agriculture also wanted to get a share of the pie, it found that it came a little late and could not be strict.
The three "fathers" have very different temperaments. They are stingy in quality inspection and stingy with "dowry". The scope of protection is very small, often only a few towns are approved. Industry and commerce are not very generous either. The scope of protection is only slightly larger than that of quality inspection, with more than a dozen towns and villages being approved. The Ministry of Agriculture is much more generous. The entire county is yours, and the scope of protection often covers the entire county (a few are townships or prefecture-level cities) administrative areas.
The three "fathers" are looking for sons-in-law respectively, and a daughter may marry different sons-in-law. Analyzing the geographical indication data of Jiangxi industry, commerce and agriculture before 2018, there were 20 applications for industrial, commercial and agricultural geographical indications at the same time, 10 of which were from different entities. The industrial, commercial and agricultural geographical indication rights holder of the geographical indication "Lushan Yunwu Tea" is the Jiujiang Tea Industry Association, but the quality inspection geographical indication was obtained by another organization.
The three "fathers" each chose different "sons-in-law". Of course, "one daughter must marry several times" will not work. Local governments have their own solutions. For example, the three departments of the geographical indication "Nanfeng Mandarin" were given to three different entities. The Nanfeng County Government unanimously authorized the management rights of the three geographical indications to one unit through documents. The local government coordinates and delegates the management rights of several geographical indications to one company, which is a solution in line with "Chinese characteristics".
The different temperaments of the three "fathers" resulted in different scopes of geographical indication protection. The government coordinated the selection of the "son-in-law", but there was another problem with the "dowry". The three "fathers" gave three special logos, which cannot be posted randomly, otherwise it will be fraud. Fortunately, after 2021, quality inspection and industry and commerce will use the "red label" uniformly. Agriculture will still have its own label. How can the use of the three special geographical indication marks be allowed?
Geographical indications also derive some concepts, including "large production areas", "small production areas" or "core production areas", etc. The meanings of each concept are self-evident. Judging from the actual situation of approval, the scope of protection for quality inspection and industrial and commercial approval is often smaller than that for agriculture.
In this way, "Chinese wisdom" is used to propose a Chinese solution: the quality inspection and industrial and commercial geographical indications shall be based on the largest protection scope, and this protection scope shall be regarded as a "small production area" or " "Core Production Areas", permission to use the merged "red label", the scope of agricultural protection is regarded as "large production areas", and outside "small production areas" are permitted to use agriculture's special signs.
Note: The protection scope of geographical indications approved later has been expanded. This article only proposes solutions for the old geographical indications.
The quality inspection in this article refers to the former General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the industry and commerce refers to the former State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the agriculture refers to the former Ministry of Agriculture.
June 2020