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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."
Because Malaysia has been claiming certain Indonesian dances are Malaysian.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/09/16/issue-%E2%80%98betawi-group-threatens-harass-malaysians%E2%80%99.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It sounds a little silly, but how different is it from other copyrights? I think most people would agree that culinary arts are as as much an exercise in creativity as visual or audio art. A particular combination of available flavors creates whole greater than the sum. Certainly copyrighting a recipe doesn't seem any different to me than a piece of software code. I guess the weak part in Malaysia's claim is that they seem to be trying to retroactively pull public domain works (recipes that have been around for generations) back into the copyrighted realm, but even that is nothing new. If they can get back the rights to their ethnic food, it seems like Beethoven's descendants should be able to continue collecting royalties on his works.
This is not a copyright or patent issue, nor is it strictly a trademark issue either. It is the seldom-referenced fourth category of "intellectual property," geographical indicators. It, like trademark, is rooted in the principle that prevents you from opening up a burger shop with big golden arches out front. Companies have a right to enforce their brand, and geographical regions have a right to regulate the quality and authenticity of any product bearing a claim of origin in that region. This is the most defensible type of intellectual property. (That said, I know nothing about the merits of this particular case.)
There's a perfectly decent generic term for sparkling wine. Talking about grana cheese generically is considerably more difficult, though, at least if you want people to understand you.
Are you adequate?
It turns out now there's a Grana Padano protected designation, so you can't call that kind of cheese grana anymore.
Are you adequate?
Although forces of evil like Disney would like to have it otherwise, copyrights are still for a limited period of time. In the U.S. this is even spelled out in our Constitution, with the copyrighted material them passing into Public Domain. This article is talking about traditional foods, not some newfangled "Invention" (which might be covered by shorter lasting patents than longer lasting copyright). So even if the concept of copyright on food were valid (and I believe it is bogus), wouldn't these foods have passed into Public Domain long ago?
Alternately, can a claim of copyright be made by a country? Wouldn't a copyright claim have to be made by an author? Clearly the government of these countries are not the authors of these foods, so they have no copyright claim on them. It is more reasonable to assume that the real author wanted their intellectual property to pass into public domain than to fall into the hands of politicians.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Your own link contradicts you. Champagne has never been a trademark; it's a protected designation of origin.
Are you adequate?
The recipe for Stilton Cheese is well known, but you can only call it Stilton if it has been made in the three Counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. It cannot be made in the village of Stilton that gave it its name since, at the time the EU came up with the definition, it had been forgotten that it had ever been produced there!
You're not generally allowed to mislabel your products in the USA to make consumers believe that they come from some region that they do not, especially if you do so to mislead consumers into paying a higher price. There exist specific exceptions in regional wine names that are recognized as semi-generics with special rules, and some regional product names that are seen as generics ("parmesan"). You can take your Wisconsin cheese and label it "Parmesan," and nobody will go after you in the United States; but if you label your $5/lb Wisconsin cheese as "Parmigiano Reggiano," that's not cool.
Are you adequate?
It's stupid because of the bit about the recipe and lack of any concession to where ingredients are sourced or whether the production process used is identical.
As an example, historically (and we're talking at least a thousand years, since it gets mentioned in the Domesday Book) Cheshire cheese was manufactured by the same process in no less than five counties; Cheshire itself, plus Denbighshire, Flintshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. The first two of those are in Wales, while the latter two and Cheshire itself are in England. According to the EU rules, only Cheshire cheese which is manufactured in Cheshire itself is now entitled to the name, despite all of the historical precedent to the contrary.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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.
Of course not, because that would be an outright lie. It was produced in Napa Valley, USA not the Champagne, France, so of course you can't claim it came from Champagne, France.
I think you meant that you can't call California sparkling wine "Champagne", which is true for the reason you outlined.
That said, things are getting pretty dodgy with Wine.
A current problem in BC for example is that less reputable companies are taking grapes grown in wineries in Croatia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and are shipping them to be bottled in British Columbia, Canada and are thus legally and accurately bearing labels claiming 'bottled in the Oakanagan, British Columbia'.
Of course, since the grapes aren't actually grown in the oakanagan, the whole thing is a complete farce. But these wines are ending up on "BC wine lists", and being sold out liquor stores as "BC Wines" I don't know offhand but I wouldn't be surprised if California's good name is being similarly tainted by this practice.
The problem isn't with recognizing some geographic source names- the problem is turning those names into enforceable local monopolies when they don't represent anything to the consumer. Here, "Washington apples" or "Idaho potatos" or "California raisins" all provide us with origin information without overstepping into limiting how other producers can market apples, potatos, or raisins. I pray that "Feta" really means a small Greek island to Europeans, because here, it means the cheese. Nobody is going to reach for "crumbly sheep and goat milk cheese aged in brine" rather than "feta cheese". What's worse is the geographic origin turns this understanding on its head: make another style of cheese in Feta (say "Cheddar") and suddenly it too is Feta cheese. Flip to the people in England making sheep cheese and calling it Cheddar and you have these perfectly useful generic terms now incapable of promoting your own products or anyone else's.
Consumer understanding should dominate these findings. If people think swiss cheese means dry cheese with holes in it, great, let anyone use it. If people think that means cheese made in Switzerland, sure, take that term away from everyone else. The reality, I believe, is that mostly consumers use these words (and assume producer's uses of these words) reflect style of product rather than geographic origin.
Well, within Mexico, tequila can only be made in the state of Jalisco and a small portion of the state of Guanajuato. It's also only to be made of blue Weber agave, which is a type of maguey. Tequila is a subset of the mezcales, and there are other mezcales, like bacanora. Other mezcales can be made with other types of maguey.
Internationally, "tequila" was granted an OAC in 1977, but the USA doesn't recognize OAC as pointed out in so many other posts. Instead, the USA (and presumably other countries) depend on trade agreements to protect specific names, and that's the case with tequila in the USA.
--Jim (me)
...which in itself no longer has any meaning given the amorphous nature of Cheshire's borders. The majority of Cheshire farms have been in Manchester or Merseyside at least once in the last 40 years (never mind the last 400.)
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
...then food could possibly one day be copyrighted on the genetic or even molecular level. I wrote a story which hints at this a short while ago.
And, speaking of Malaysia, they already go after anyone with "Mc" in the name - so no trademarking "McSandwich" or "McBreadWithMeat" or "McDoubleMcMeatProductWithMcCheeseProduct."
You missed the news.
http://michaelsmith.id.au