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Argument: The name Champagne was built by the beverage not the region

Supporting Evidence

  • Stephen B. Brush & Doreen Stabinsky, “Valuing Local Knowledge, Indigenous people and Intellectual Property Rights”, 1996, Island Press “The notion of a geographical name attached to a product is at the heart of this series of laws and rules, as the name must designate something more than a simple locale and it must permit the product to be individualized. The geographical name thus acts as a marker that presupposes a link between product and place. It is this relation that the INAO employs as the basis for determining intellectual property rights and which, as a result must be protected . Indeed the geographical designation must be inseparably linked to the terroir or soil of actual production. If this relationship is not well established, a production process could be transferred elsewhere without great consequence. In such instances, the protection of a geographical name becomes more difficult and harder to justify and legitimize(INAO 1992:33)”