1Draft- Not to be Quoted Operationalisation of GI Protection in India: A Preliminary Exploration

The term ‘Geographical Indications ’ (GIs) entered the terminology of international intellectual property law by way of its inclusion in the Agreement on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). While GI, with its very specific legal meaning a la the TRIPS Agreement, is a relatively new category of intellectual property right (IPR), the practice of using place names or other symbols as ‘indications of the geographical origin ’ of a product is an age-old practice. As far as the scope of protection of GIs under TRIPS is concerned, there is a problem of a hierarchy in the levels of protection based on an arbitrary categorisation of goods. This is because, though TRIPS contains a single, identical definition for all GIs, irrespective of product categories, it mandates a two level system of protection- (i) the basic protection applicable to all GIs in general (under Article 22); and (ii) an additional protection applicable only for the GIs denominating wines and spirits (under Article 23).1 Since 2000, India, along with a host of other like-minded countries has been pressing for an ‘extension ’ of Article 23 protection to cover all categories of GIs. However, due to wide-ranging divergences of views among various WTO-Members the issue of ‘extension ’ has reached a situation of virtual stalemate for quite some time now.2 Meanwhile, India has put in place a sui generis system of GI protection with enactment of a law exclusively dealing with protection of GIs, e.g. ‘The Geographical Indications of Good