geographical indication

geographical indication, sign designating a product derived from a specific geographic area and often denoting an item’s reputed quality and regionally specific characteristics. A geographical indication, or GI, typically takes the form of the place name associated with the product’s site of cultivation or manufacture (such as “Bordeaux” wine or “Roquefort” cheese, each of which refers to a specific place in France), but a GI can also be a name strongly connected to the product’s place of origin (such as a Kilim carpet from Turkey). A GI is registered by a national authority—either a country’s intellectual property agency or another special body.

Difference from other intellectual property protections

GI tags confer intellectual property rights over selected goods and function like trademarks. However, rather than protecting the products of a single company, they label items that originate in a relatively circumscribed area, often one with a reputation for producing unique goods sought by consumers. Geographical indications are commonly used for agricultural and food products, such as wines, spirits, and cheeses, including Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) cheese, Champagne, Tequila, Café de Colombia coffee, and Darjeeling tea. GI tags are also applied to goods noted for their locally or culturally specialized methods of creation. Such goods include traditional handicrafts, such as Chanderi saris from Madhya Pradesh, India, and commercially manufactured products, such as Swiss watches.

Appellation of origin is another term designating a product deriving from a specific place—a term predating the contemporary use of geographical indication. The latter term came into common use late in the 20th century as a blanket designation for a range of extant signs of protected geographic origin (such as the aforementioned appellation of origin as well as indication of source).

Benefits

Distinctive attributes of a region’s soil, native species, climate, and terrain, as well as regionally specific production techniques, can all contribute toward the manufacture of goods whose qualities are, according to the GI legal framework, inexorably tied to their places of origin. GIs are therefore intended to protect the livelihoods of regional producers as a body from attempts to falsely apply geographic labels to products originating in other areas or made with other techniques, which may be of inferior caliber and could damage the reputation of authentic regional goods. The tags can prevent regional terms from becoming generic designations lacking legal protections, as happened with “Cheddar” cheese (once associated with the English town of Cheddar, where the type of cheese originated, but now applied to cheeses produced around the world). GI tags can, moreover, reassure consumers of the quality and truthful labeling of the products they purchase. They can also protect indigenous forms of knowledge, cultivation, and craftsmanship from being appropriated or falling into disuse.

International agreements

The perceived need for trade protections in an increasingly global economy was signaled by the signing of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883, one of the first major international agreements concerning trademarks, patents, and other forms of intellectual property. Notably, the convention includes “appellations of origin” and “indications of source” among the protected categories, and it prohibits the false use of regional labels on consumer goods.

The Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and Their International Registration (signed 1958, revised 2015 through the Geneva Act) is the earliest treaty designed exclusively to safeguard appellations of origin. The agreement, which went into effect in 1966, also allowed for the creation of an international registry for appellations of origin. Registered marks must be protected in all member countries according to the terms of the agreement.

The present-day concept of geographical indications was given a standard definition for use in an international legal context in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, a multilateral treaty on intellectual property rights signed by members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that came into force in 1995. Article 22.1 of the TRIPS Agreement provides the following definition of GIs:

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Geographical indications are, for the purposes of this Agreement, indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.

The agreement goes on to note that these signs must be protected to avoid “misleading” the public and to prevent “unfair competition.” Article 23 of the agreement is specifically dedicated to GIs covering wine and spirits, which receive “additional protection” beyond that applied to other goods.

As of 2025 the TRIPS Agreement and the Lisbon Agreement serve as international legal frameworks governing the current use of geographical indications.