Terroir and Trade War: Reforming China’s Legislation on Generic Terms Under the nfluence of the EU and US

Abstract

Geographical indications (GIs), valuable intellectual property assets for their respective countries and regions, are in danger of being considered as generic names for types of products and falling into public domain. Driven by trade interests, both the EU and US are competing in China to promote their conflicting approaches to the determination of generic status and the preventive measures against genericide. This article demonstrates that the EU-US competition results in a hybrid of both approaches, which cannot help overcome the difficulty of assessing generic status under China’s current GI system and may lead to a loss of legislative coherence. Furthermore, the hybrid compromises the intended goals of the bilateral agreements between China and the EU/US. Since the ‘bilateral treaty model’ fails to satisfy the need of each contractual party, we propose that national GI laws must be designed on the basis of the distinguishing function of GIs. Generic terms, Geographical indications, Terroir, Trade competition, Bilateral agreements, Consumer perception, Harmonized approach, Distinguishing function