Legal Protection Of Geographical Indications

In recent years, "Geographical indications" has already become a new science in the intellectual property and has influenced the advancement of Doha negotiations. However in China, it has the rich geographical indications products, but it's manner is ambiguous and it's standpoint is fuzzy, mainly because of lack of geographical indications' lawresources and the long-exsiting standpoint—"the foreign country has something and China lacks something, therefore China should have something"in legal circles in China。The value of this article focuses on constructing the geographical indications law systems according to national conditions through the analysis of subject, object and contents of the right of geographical indications, from the logic, the value and rationality of law system itself on the analysis in China.In the first part of this article, it introduces the evolution of geographical indications conception, first, from "indications of source", then "appellations of origin", to "geographical indications", it also introduces the conception of geographical indications in Trademark Law in China and analyzes characteristics of geographical indications: the historicity; the universal social influence and well-knownness; the collective in the subject.In the second part of this article, it first introduces the conception and characteristics of traditional knowledge, then analyzes the common traits in traditional knowledge and geographical indications: the common traits in humanities factor; the common traits in natural traits; the common traits in the background of appearing; the common traits in forming process and in the benefit-sharing mechanism, finally draws the conclusion that the object which geographical indications protects is the traditional knowledge.In the third part of this article, taking the conclusion as a foundation, it analyzes the structure of the right of geographical indications and carries it on the comparison with the trademark right. In this part, it explains the compound of of the right of geographical indications: on one hand, the true subject is each producer conforming to the working conditions in the specific physiographic region, and each producer has the right to use geographical indications; on the other hand, "the producer collective" on behalf of each producer has the right to manage geographical indications and to supervise the use of producers. At the same time, it constructs the contents of the right of geographical indications, including the right of the producer and the right of "the producer collective", the former has the right to use, request, prohibit and supervise, the latter has the right to formulate roles and regulations, permit other people to use geographical indications, supervise and prohibit. Any right should be limited, without exception for the right of geographical indications.In the fourth part of this article, it introduces two main kinds of foreign legislation patterns related to geographical indications. In one pattern, taking France as the representative, it introduces France which had specially legislated to protect geographical indications; in another pattern, taking US as the representative, it introduces US which had used trademark law to protect geographical indications. It analyzes and evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of the two patterns, it analyzs the current legislative conditions in China and finally concludes that China should formulate special geographical indications law.