Thursday, May 17, 2007

Geographic Indications limit intellectual property theft

The importance of Geographic Indications: Adloun's watermelon growers complain about the usurpation of their name and reputation by other producers and importers, who sell imported watermelon as "Adlouni Watermelon". Geographic Indications or Indications of Origins are certifications that allow local small holders to create cooperative control over a produce or a product they have developed over the years, and that has a special reputation (like Camembert cheese in France is an "appelation d'origine controllee"). Lebanon is currently working on the GI legislation, and soon there will be 2 certified products: Hasbayya's olive oil and Kafarfila's sweet onions. Stay posted for news of Lebanese GI, I'm working on the project.

2 comments:

Ms Levantine said...

This is extremely useful to sell agri. products. Can you tell us how many GIs you are working on and the speed of implementation?

For eg. in the spirit of "route de l'olivier", is it possible to have GIs for olive oils in different regions under some type of Leb. agri. product umbrella?

Rami Zurayk said...

We're now working on just these 2, because of the project's limitations. The legislation is not there yet, and given the state of affairs in Leb, it wont be ready for a while. Other problem is that the legislation and the concept behind it are "imported" and does not fit the local situation very well, which makes it very difficult to have more GIs. But yes, we could have for olive oil what we currently have for wine in France.