In May 2016, the EU and Mexico launched the negotiations to modernize the existing trade agreement which entered into force in 2000. While the existing agreement does not cover intellectual property (IP), the new one will have an IP chapter, including provisions on the protection of GIs. The existence of the WIPO Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin (to which Mexico and 6 EU members – Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Slovakia – are party), and the EU-Mexico Agreement on the mutual recognition and protection of designations for spirit drinks, are facilitating the negotiations on GIs.
In this framework, on 11 August, Mexico published for opposition the list of GIs that the EU intends to protect via the agreement (there are no spirits because they are protected by the spirit drinks agreement). The EU intends to include the EU GIs already protected via the Lisbon Agreement in the bilateral agreement as well. The deadline for opposition is 11 October.
On the Mexican side, there seem to be around 30 GIs, but the list is not finalised yet. The EU will proceed with the publication for opposition later this year.
oriGIn will keep on monitoring these negotiations, as well as a problematic new GIs law currently under discussion in Mexico
This summary has been extracted from an “oriGIn Alert”, which is a service reserved exclusively to oriGIn members.
