Brussels, 02/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - At the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) meeting on Monday 29 June, the European Commission provided information on the adoption of the Geneva Act within the context of the revision of the Lisbon Agreement for the protection of designations of origin and their international registration. Adoption took place at a World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) conference in Geneva last month.
The WIPO deals with everything to do with intellectual property and trademarks, and has over 180 members. The Lisbon Agreement dates from 1958 and created an international system for the protection of designations of origin for the contracting parties to the agreement simply by means of registration with the WIPO. The Lisbon Agreement has only 28 contracting parties, which include 7 EU countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Slovakia).
Currently, the EU is not a contracting party. The revision of the Lisbon Agreement adopted in Geneva includes: - extension of the scope to cover all geographical indications; - updating to take account of changes in the international legal framework on intellectual property, for example, the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS); - allowing international organisation like the EU to become full members of the agreement.
The problem on this last point is the legal basis for ratification of the agreement: the Commission says this should be Article 207 (TFEU) which grants full power to the EU, while some member states to the agreement say that the legal basis should be Article 114 on powers shared between the EU and member states is the one that ought to be used. The countries involved believe that, while agricultural geographical indications clearly fall within the remit of the EU, the same cannot be said for non-agricultural geographical indications, which are covered by the agreement and which remain the responsibility of the member states. In addition, the financial aspects of the agreement also fall within national responsibility in which the EU has no right to intervene. (Lionel Changeur)