Policies and Regulations

Chapter 4 Trademarks for Agricultural Products and Geographical Indications

Updated: 2010-04-22 15:21

August 2009, Guizhou AIC held the experience exchanging meeting on “trademark enriching farmers”. Zhongjiang in Sichuan is a typical county with hill coverage, and suffered a lot from a serious earthquake, but it owns a long history in planting Chinese medicine with special quality and development potential. The Plantation area of Zhongjiang Dansen (the root of red-rooted salvia) and Zhongjiang Baishao (white peony root) had dramatically expanded after registering their Geographical Indications. Now the county has three products with Geographical Indications with the third Zhongjiang Dried Noodle, and their output value already took 18.4 percent of the county’s total, bringing 2,000 Yuan a year to each family in the plantation area, 59 percent of each family total income.

Dazu BlackGoat, from Dazu County in Chongqing, had its annual output value reaching 50 million Yuan. The goat’s mutton price tripled after its successful registration of Geographical Indication, from 5-8 Yuan per kg in 2005 jumped to 20-40 Yuan, and the price of breeding goat soared 4 times.

In Xinjiang Urge NationalityAutonomous Region, for another example, after its grape registered Turpan Geographical Indication, there were 360,000 people working with the grape, 90 percent of local farmers, exporting 3,000 tons of grapes, valuing 9 million Yuan.

3. In-depth research, training and public awareness education campaign on agricultural product trademarks and Geographical Indications

In 2009, senior officials of SAIC and CTMO went to Liaoning, Zhejiang and some other places conducting on-site investigations byface-to-face talk with enterprises, industry associations and farmers in order to instruct local registration of agricultural Heng County AIC in Guangxi Province dispatched teams to fields to guide Jasmine flower farmer in geographical trademarks registration.

Product trademarks and Geographical Indications, publicize the knowledge, find out example and experience. They also guided the local people to properly utilize agricultural product trademarks and Geographical Indications to promote local economy and to increase farmers’ income. In addition, CTMO talked with the Ministry of Agriculture and other departments to solve the conflict of trademark with name of the plant varieties, and how to protect farmers’ interests. These efforts had actively promoted the application and registration of Geographical Indication and trademark for agricultural products, enforced the communication with other government departments and local officials, therefore helped upgrade Geographical Indications and trademarks for agricultural products and improved their administration.