On 1 May 2018, the Agreement on the protection of GIs for agricultural products between the EU and Iceland entered into force (together with the one on the further liberalisation of trade in agriculture).
The GIs Agreement provides protection to 1150 agri-food EU GIs listed in Annex II (additions to the GIs lists are allowed). The level of protection is solid, specifically against:
- any direct or indirect commercial use of a protected name: (i) for comparable products not compliant with the product specification of the protected name, or (ii) if such use exploits the reputation of a geographical indication;
- any misuse, imitation or evocation, even if the true origin of the product is indicated or if the protected name is translated, transcribed, transliterated or accompanied by an expression such as ‘style’, ‘type’, ‘method’, ‘as produced in’, ‘imitation’, ‘flavour’, ‘like’ or similar;
- any other false or misleading indication as to the provenance, origin, nature or essential qualities of the product, on the inner or outer packaging, advertising material or documents relating to the product concerned, and the packing of the product in a container liable to convey a false impression as to its origin;
- any other practice liable to mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the product.
Moreover, coexistence between GIs and prior trademarks is allowed (art. 6.5) and administrative enforcement is provided (art. 7).
The protection of European wines and spirits GIs in Iceland is provided under the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA Agreement).
This summary has been extracted from an “oriGIn Alert”, which is a service reserved exclusively to oriGIn members. Click here to join oriGIn
For more information about bilateral and plurilateral agreements covering GIs see the category “Bilateral/Plurilateral Agreements” in the section Policy and Advocacy
