| 英文摘要 |
The U.S. law does not recognize GIs as a sui generis category of IP. Under the U.S. law, GIs are protected through a number of regimes deriving from a collection of unrelated laws and regulations. These laws and regulations serve different policy objectives and consumer protection and the prevention of unfair competition are only part of them. There is an inherent incompatibility between the concept of trademarks and that of GIs. Although included under the Lanham Act, certification marks and collective trademarks are two special categories of marks. In U.S., the origins of both categories of marks were in some way connected to the protection of geographical designations. Conceptually, these two categories of marks better accommodate GIs. However, being subject to the general principles of trademark law, the protection for GIs that these two categories of marks can provide is rather limited and uncertain. Following the established trademark law principles, when a geographical term is used as a certification mark or collective trademark, the main policy concern is to preserve the freedom of all actors in the region to use the term and, therefore, the exclusivity of such geographical marks will be rather limited. Administrative schemes regulating product labeling and advertising are also used to regulate commercial use of geographical designations. These regulations serve diverse policy goals, ranging from consumer protection, domestic producer protection, to facilitate the development of specific industry. |
