The Agreement between Switzerland and Jamaica on GIs – concluded in 2013 – entered in to force on 1 September 2014. With the overall objective to promote trade, the parties have agreed to mutually recognize and protect GIs – as well as to fight counterfeiting – in their respective jurisdictions.
The Agreement confers GIs a strong level of protection that goes beyond the minimum level of the Art.22 of the TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Country names and emblems of both parties are also protected under the agreement, reflecting the interest of Jamaica and Switzerland in fighting against the use of their country names on products with no association with the country of origin. This is also in line with the Swiss legislative reform “Swissness”, adopted in June 2013, aimed at improving the protection of the “made in Switzerland” and the Swiss cross at a national and international level (See https://www.ige.ch/en/herkunftsangaben/swissness.html).
The text of the Agreement is available (FR-DE-IT) @ http://www.admin.ch/opc/it/classified-compilation/20132547/index.html
This summary has been extracted from an “oriGIn Alert”, which is a service reserved exclusively to oriGIn members.
