USPTO Goes Video with GI Protection Concerns

Three videos about current issues and events at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are now available here.

The featured video this month deals with geographical indications and explains the United States government’s position regarding a type of intellectual property that indicates the origin of goods or services in a particular geographic area with particular characteristics. According to the accompanying press release,

Geographical indications (GIs) are an important topic because of the ongoing debate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) regarding whether the international rules for the protection of GIs at the national level are sufficient or should be rewritten to accommodate some WTO Members’ trading goals. There are some WTO Members demanding a rewrite of the international rules in order to accomplish worldwide automatic protection for their geographical indications. Such a system would extinguish many uses of generic terms like parmesan, feta, sherry, or champagne in the United States and other WTO Members and would negatively impact the existing trademark uses of these types of terms, even to the point of potentially eliminating the registration of any geographic term as part of a trademark. Such proposals would obviously have a significant and decidedly negative impact on the U.S. trademark system and on U.S. producers and exporters. This video was designed by the USPTO and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to outline the U.S. protection system for GIs and to address some concerns about changing the international rules for GIs.

The video follows on the heels of a bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and Europe on wine-making practices and labeling of wine which would limit use of certain “semi-generic” terms in the U.S. market and allow the use of certain regulated terms on U.S. wine exported to the EU.

The other video titles include "10th Annual Independent Inventors Conference" and "Anti-Piracy," a five-minute video targeted at young people to educate them on consequences of copying and downloading music and other entertainment from unauthorized sources.