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Malaysia Seeking to Copyright Food?
Techdirt is reporting that Malaysia seems to be jumping on the copyright/trademark bandwagon and attempting to protect the "ownership" of certain ethnic foods. Of course, this may just be a massive PR push in an attempt to grab some eyeballs. "Last year, around this time, we noted that the country of Lebanon was trying to claim that it owns hummus and other middle eastern foods, such as falafel, tabouleh and baba gannouj, and that no other country could produce them. It seems that other parts of the world are seeing the same sort of thing, as Malaysia is trying to declare that it owns popular Malaysian dishes, like nasi lemak."
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Wrong. Those are designations of origins. Champagne and Parma are actual places. You can make parmesan or champagne, but you can't call it such (in Europe, anyway) because such a designation would denote that the foodstuff actually came from that region, and if it sucked, it would reflect poorly on the region. In the USA, a syrup producer in Kansas could not call their product 'Vermont maple syrup.' Calling a cheese 'Parmesan' or a sparkling wine 'Champagne' is like calling a syrup 'Vermont.'
AFAIK, Hummus, falafel, and so forth are generic names for foods traditional to dozens of countries. Nasi lemak means 'rice in cream' and is also not a designation of origin, therefore, attempting to copyright it is ridiculous and no other country is going to honor Malaysia's demands. Not that we in the US honor Europe's protected designations of origins anyway.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Or, rather, the Champagne district's right to Champagne and the Cognac district's right to Cognac.
There's nothing unique in the attempt to protect the designation of origin.
You can't make "Delft" pottery except in Delft.
Delft pottery is a Dutch knockoff of Chinese pottery. Maybe the Chinese should sue?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Indonesia and Malaysia is currently in a...uh.. copyright war. For a few months, there are some cultural stuff (like dance, show, food) that each claims to origin from themselves. I believe it was started by a Malaysia tourism advertisement that claims certain dance to origin from Malaysia.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
According to that article, the U.S. does not generally recognize protection of the designation of origin, unless it is for products made within the U.S. Apparently you can have American champagne, but vidalia onions can only come the Vidalia, Georgia region.
However, I'm pretty sure protection of designation of origin is not covered under copywrite laws.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
No, they don't. The secret recipes of McDonalds and KFC are trade secrets.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Actually, this is different. In the EU and US, names of food is controlled as trademarks. You can still produce sparking wine in the Napa Valley, but you can't claim it came from the Champagne region. What Malaysia is claiming is that they own the "copyright" to these food and that no one else is allowed to even produce it elsewhere. Of course, the US and EU fight over their trademarks - the US considers "champagne" (little "c") to be a semi-generic term, thus "California champagne" is o.k. Same with terms like Cheddar. And, the EU failed to recognize US designations, such as Idaho potatoes or Vidalia onions until they lost a WTO case in 2004.
I find it interesting that Malaysia would be claiming there should be copyright protection for foods, when there isn't any kind of copyright protection for anything else in that country/region -- not in any real sense.
This isn't a troll -- just try going to any market in Malaysia. You'll find whole tables of knockoff DVDs, knockoff Paul Frank T-shirts, knockoff shoes, knockoff handbags ... the average person sees nothing wrong with it.
I once went to a DVD store in a mall on the island of Penang, off the west coast of Malaysia, probably around 2002. I mean this was a real store with one of those roll-down metal cages that go in front of the plate glass windows when they close shop, inside a real mall with a food court and everything. This store had one small bookcase full of legitimate, imported American DVDs. The entire rest of the store was given over to knockoffs. You could get DVD-5 copies for about $5 and the DVD-9s were about $8. They were well aware what they were doing; they even had DVD players and TVs on hand so you could double-check the video quality of the copies you were buying. I picked up a set of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD-9, plus a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In passing, I told one of the kids working there (he was wearing a polo shirt with the store's logo on it) that you couldn't buy any of these movies in America (at that time, none of them was available on DVD). He looked at me like I'd just told him I'd never seen rice before.
Mind you, technically it was all illegal. Malaysia actually seemed to have a pretty strong force of "copyright cops" that would do sweeps for pirated DVDs. The problem was that copyright law was one of those laws that was so poorly respected by the average citizen -- basically, everybody living in Malaysia had broken it at least once, and probably did so routinely -- that there was absolutely no respect for enforcement, which in turn leads to corruption. Everybody involved in the knock-off trade seemed to have a contact who would tip them off when a sting was about to happen. I met some Australian tourists who were hoping to go to the DVD store I mentioned, but when they went (on a Wednesday afternoon) it was closed. Apparently they had been warned not to open that day. Similarly, even guys who were hawking their wares on blankets at the night markets would occasionally get calls on their cell phones, then immediately roll up their bundles and walk away while customers were still waving money.
Still, no doubt this effort by the Malaysian government does a couple things:
Personally, though, I doubt the average Malaysian cares much more about it than Americans care when we find out our home city is now "the sister city of Vladivostok." Sounds great, but what difference does it make to me?
Breakfast served all day!
Serbia is not part of the EU. So yeah, you can sell Serbian-made cheese in Serbia and call it "feta," but any cheese you export to the EU may not be labeled so. And if you joined the EU, unless you got a special concession about this, those cheeses you mention would have to change their labeling.
Are you adequate?
In England, we call them "chips". The things you call chips, we call "crisps".
Similar thing in New York with Sapporo beer. It says Export on the can but when you read it closely it is made in, and imported, from Canada rather than Japan..... Not quite the same!
As per my previous comment re cheddar, you're completely wrong about Cheshire as well. Another generic term, as are most British cheese names including such as Lancashire and Wensleydale.
The definitive information on this subject seems to be here:
http://www.cheeseboard.co.uk/facts/faqs-31
See the section titled:
"Can all British cheeses be produced in any part of the country or are there some cheeses that can only be produced in specific areas?"
Next time you post, how about a quick fact-check to avoid talking crap?