oriGIn Alerts 05 December 2016: #gTLDs #E-Commerce #Enforcement

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#gTLDs #E-Commerce

On December 2, oriGIn organized and moderated a panel on “GIs on the Internet: Challenges Related to gTLDs and E-Commerce” at the INTA Digital World Conference in Brussels.

The objective of the panel was twofold:

  • On the one hand, the panel discussed the limits to protect GIs registered as second level Internet domain names in the thousand existing generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as “.com”, “.food” and “.coffee”. Meanwhile, several country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as “.fr”, recognize GIs (like trademarks and other IPRs), as a valid title to activate dispute resolution mechanisms, and wine GIs obtained recognition in the “.wine”/“.vin” through a private agreement negotiated with the company in charge of such strings. The urgent need to allow GIs beneficiaries to fight for their rights in gTLDs and fully benefit the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was thus evocated.
  • On the other hand, the innovative agreements signed by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture (the national authority in charge of the GI ex officio protection according to Regulation 1151/2012) with global e-commerce players, such as e-Bay, Alibaba and Amazon, to monitor infringements and protect Italian GIs commercialized on those platforms (with no costs for the GIs beneficiaries) were presented as a model for other EU countries.

 

#Enforcement

On 2 December, oriGIn attended in Milan the Legal and International Working Group of the EUIPO Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights.

The Working Group discussed issues related to the enforcement of intellectual property in the EU, focusing in particular on costs of storage and destruction of infringing goods. EU Member States have different rules on this. This does not facilitate the enforcement of intellectual property rights by small and medium enterprises. The Observatory will thus launch a study to estimate the costs of storage and destruction of infringing goods in EU Member States. To have costs for GIs groups taken into account in this study, we need you to share with us your experience in terms of resources your association had to use to store and destroy fake GIs in a given country: please do it by 20 December (emails to ida@origin-gi.com ).

 

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