Geographical Indications and Trademarks in the Asia-Pacific region – Implications for Australia.
Professor William van Caenegem (Bond University)
Intellectual Property and Trade in the Pacific Century
Brisbane, 22 June 2017
QUT Intellectual Property and Innovation Law Research Program
Recent research addressed two questions: whether putative Australian geographical indications might be able to be registered in two jurisdictions, Japan and China; and secondly, whether such registration would confer measurable advantages upon users of Australian food GIs in the fight against free-riders. In this context this paper considers the position of origin branding in those jurisdictions: do Japanese and Chinese consumers attach value to reliable knowledge about the regional origin of the food they purchase? Are consumers interested in regional origin or does country of origin information suffice? How are origin brands protected in the two countries? The answers derived in relation to Japan and China can be extrapolated to a number of other Asian countries, including South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. All these countries have relatively recently introduced registration systems for food geographical indications. The conclusion advanced in this paper is that registration of geographical indications in Asian jurisdictions has advantages that Australian locality brand owners could secure with optimal efficiency if a domestic Australian food geographical indications registration system were introduced.
Biography
William van Caenegem is Professor of Law at Bond University. He teaches and researches intellectual property law. In recent years he has undertaken a number of funded research projects concerning GI protection for food in Australia. He has published on GIs and trademarks, on IP and innovation issues and is the author of a LexisNexis textbook on IP. He also conducts comparative research in the area of IP law.
