In July 2019, the law amending part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and introducing the protection of geographical indications (scheme which will be available together with the existing appellations of origin one) has been approved. According to the information from the IP Russian authority (Rospatent), the registration of geographical indications will be available in July 2020.
Following the TRIPs definition, the new law defines geographical indications as a sign identifying a product as originating in the territory of a country or a region or an area, where specific quality, reputation or other characteristics thereof are essentially due to the geographical origin. Another element introduced by the new law is the possibility for groups / associations (and for their members) to apply for appellations of origin and geographical indications protection.
The protection of appellations of origin is available in the Russian Federation since 1992, when the concept was introduced in part IV of the Civil Code. This law is available on the WIPO Lex Global Database . An evaluation of such law, including the issue of requests of registrations by groups, can be found on the oriGIn manual on how protect GIs in the BRICs countries, pages 14 to 29 . To date, oriGIn has found some 115 national appellations of origin recognized in Russia
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 GIs protection at the national level, see the concerning category in the section Policy and Advocacy
