Protection Of Geographical Indications Legal Issues

As a new category of intellectual property right,geographical indication's object is some information which uncovers the tight link between a certain kind of product's unique characteristics, such as quality, goodwill and so on, and the natural or humanistic surroundings of a particular geographical region for ordinary people. Because of this extraordinary indicatory function that geographical indications have, to qualified manufacturers of goods with geographical indications, geographical indications are intangible asset that can bring them wealth and goodwill, and to consumers and users,geographical indications not only mean some promise or guarantee made by the producers or sellers of products with special geographical indications' marks,but also are symbols which reflect the difference between products with special geographical indication's marks and other ones. Thus,at one side protecting geographical indications through legislating represents the esteem to intellectual fruits and the acknowledgement towards innovative work; at the other side, for the sake of consumers or users' interests,it is crucial and necessary to strengthen the management on the using of geographical indications with entitlement and the work against the illegal using of geographical indications without permission.The value of geographical indications themselves,the enhancement of international intercommunication,the globalization of world economy,the accession of the People's Republic of China to the World Trade Organization, all these factors above request China with so abundant resource of geographical indications to build the legal system about geographical indications. Basically speaking, China has established its own legal system to supervise and protect geographical indications through the continuous revision of the Trademark Law together with its affiliated regulations and the formulating of the Protection Rules on Products Designated Origin, etc. But Chinese geographical indications' legal system still has some defects because of our inadequate attention to the protection of geographical indications and comparative lag in the aspects of the theoretical research and the protecting practice related to geographical indications.Based on the necessity of protecting geographical indications and the problems and defects in Chinese contemporary legal system about geographical indications,this thesis is begun with the analysis on the basic theoretical issues about geographical indication,such as the concept of geographical indication, and aims at how to improve Chinese corresponding legal system,putting emphasis upon the consideration and illustration of several issues, for example,the nature of geographical indication right, the present situation and the problems of geographical indications' protection both in China and in the world, some suggestions on the improvement of Chinese geographical indications'legal system. Through deepening the research on legal issues related to geographical indications, we could provide the improvement of Chinese geographical indications' legal system and the Chinese practice of protecting geographical indications with a firmer theoretical basis, which is the purpose of writing this thesis.