Laws related to the geographical indication

Article related to geographical indication in Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China (2013)

Article 16.  A trademark shall not be registered and its use shall be prohibited if it consists of or contains a geographical indication in respect of goods not originating in the region indicated to such an extent as to mislead the public; however, registrations made in good faith shall continue to be valid.

A geographical indication referred to in the preceding paragraph is a sign which indicates a good as originating in a certain region, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to the natural or human factors of the region.

Articles related to geographical indication in Measures for the Registration and Administration of Collective Marks and Certification Marks (2003)

Article 4. Any party applying for the registration of a collective mark shall furnish documents certifying the qualification of the subject and indicate in detail the names and addresses of the members of the collective. Any party applying for the registration of a geographic indication as a collective mark shall furnish documents certifying the qualification of the subject and submit the detailed information of the professionals and special testing equipments of its own or of any other organization authorized by it to show its capability of supervising the particular quality of the goods to which the said geographic indication applies.

A society, an association or any other organization applying for the registration of a geographic indication as a collective mark shall be composed of members from within the region indicated by the geographic indication.

Article 6. Any party applying for the registration of a geographic indication as a collective mark or a certification mark shall also furnish the approval documents issued by the government, which has jurisdiction there over, or by the competent authority of the industry.

Any foreign person or enterprise applying for the registration of a geographical indication as a collective mark or a certification mark shall furnish documents certifying that the geographic indication in question, in his or its name, is under the legal protection in the country of origin.

Article 7. Any party applying for registration of a geographic indication as a collective mark or a certification mark shall present the following information in the application documents:

(1) the given quality, reputation or any other characteristic of the goods indicated by the geographic indication;

(2) the correlation between the given quality, reputation or any other characteristic of the goods and the natural and human factors of the region indicated by the geographic indication;

(3) the boundary of the region indicated by the geographic indication.

Article 8. A geographic indication in respect of which an application is filed for registration as a collective mark or a certification mark may be a name of the region indicated by the geographic indication, or any other visual signs capable of indicating that a goods originate from the region.

The region referred to in the preceding paragraph is not required to be fully consistent with the name or boundary of the current administrative division.

Article 9. Where several geographic indications for wines constitute homonyms and these geographic indications can be distinguished from one another and do not mislead the public, each geographic indication may be applied for the registration as a collective mark or certification mark.