On The International Legal Protection Of The Geographical Indications

As one of the important parts of the intellectual property legal regime, the GIs, of great values of economy and culture, embody the inherent relation between the quality or other characteristics and the geographical environments of the source of a product. With the development of the international free trade market and the progresses in the international protection of intellectual property, the international protection of GIs is more and more highly valued in the world.Different from what is in other fields of the international legal protection of intellectual property, the international protection of GIs is more manifesting the contradiction between the Old World and the New World instead of between the developed countries and the developing countries. It is considerably difficult to protect the GIs in a wide range and high level in the framework set up by the world-wide international treaties because of the complexity and the profound relationship of interests underlying. The current system of the international protection of GIs established by the TRIPs Agreement, which sheds light on the compromise and leverage between the interest groupings in the developed world, cannot provide a fair playfield of every GI rightholder in the world. At present, the related special and regional international organizations are playing an important role in the international protection of GIs.The promotion of the international protection of GIs requires efforts in many aspects by different subjects. Firstly, the negotiations between the countries for the international protection of GIs under the current international legal framework should be enhanced. Secondly, the international protection of GIs should take full advantage of the regional and related special international organizations. And thirdly, the abundant cooperation among the developing countries should be appreciated for form a independent power to improve for the fairness of the international legal protection of GIs.This thesis tries to evaluate the situation of the current international legal protection of the geographical indications (GIs) by contrasting and analyzing the characteristics of the regimes of international GI protection provided by the international treaties and the regional international organizations, and to propose some suggestions for China about dealing with the negotiations and policy-making on the international protection of GIs.