Mejillón de Galicia (in Spanish) or Mexillón de Galicia (in Gallego) is an EU-registered Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) since 2007. Ramon Franco S.A. is a company based in Galicia producing canned mussels, which do not correspond to the PDO specifications. The company marketing its canned mussels using the label “de las Rías Gallegas” (ría in Spanish means estuary).
Earlier in 2024, the Court of Appeal of La Coruña considered the mention of “Rías Gallegas” in the label to be an infringement of the PDO Mejillón de Galicia. According to the PDO specifications , the mussels should be produced in specific parts of the Galician Rías, to which the product actually owes its specific characteristics. The Court of Appeal considered the use of “Rías Gallegas” to be evoking the PDO. The ruling is available here (in Spanish).
In its decision, the Court mainly referred to the CJEU decision on Queso Manchego where the CJEU considered a packaging consisting in the picture of a horse rider in a landscape with windmills and sheep to be evoking the PDO Queso Manchego. Consumers associate such a combination of images to Don Quixote and, hence, of the region La Mancha.
In case of the PDO Mejillón de Galicia, the Spanish Court also established the evocation through conceptual proximity by usage of verbal signs on the packing of a product, which could trigger the PDO product in the mind of the average consumer. Evocation through conceptual proximity happens when there is no visual or phonetic similarity between the protected denomination, PDO or PGI and the infringing product. However, there is an element in the denomination, a verbal or figurative sign on the packaging or even similarity of the products themselves that triggers the link between the two products in the mind of the consumer. In the current case, the use of “Rías Gallegas” creates that linkage with the PDO.
See the oriGIn paper for more information on the protection of PDO, PGI and GIs against “evocation” in the EU regulations and case law https://www.origin-gi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/oriGIn-paper-Evocation-14_09_2021.pdf
