India, the European Union and Geographical Indications: Convergence of Interests and Challenges Ahead

In recent past geographical indication (GI) has emerged as one of the important instruments of intellectual property protection. The TRIPs committee should work towards clearing the confusion about interpretation of the Doha Declaration. While some countries, including Bulgaria, the EU and India, insist that the Doha Declar ation contains a clear mandate for negotiations, others, such as Argentina, dispute this interpretation. Nevertheless, India and the EU have jointly initiated some ef forts to strengthen the protection of GIs.The awareness among the developing countries has also increased manifold, a series of proposals to widen the list of geographical indications being a clear evidence of this. However, apart from getting GIs protected, developing countries would also have to take care of maintaining and ensuring the quality of their GI-protected products.