Posted: May 22nd, 2023

Trade Interacting with Culture

Evidently, geographical indications have been used profoundly for the purpose of propagating the economic solvency of a product from certain regions, especially European countries such as France, USA, and United Kingdom among others. Most of these countries have noted that commodities that are conjoined with geographical identities are protected as intellectual properties by the WTO law.

As a result, the products do not only get protections against the production of counterfeit, but they also adopt critical preference by the consumers because they are attached to authentic value. As a result, the businesspeople in the society are struggling to identify such products that identify authenticity in an attempt to woe customers and obtain competitive advantage over other brands posing competition in the market.

In the process of developing these markets for GIs, traders have embraced a tendency of developing and inventing traditions in the pretext of originality in order to grant them the privilege of acquiring the geographical identity status. Understandably, the geographical indications are expected to exist naturally rather than being developed as virtual traditions to fit the market. This has resulted to profound distortion of true culture rendering the GI incapable of protecting authentic way of living.

In essence, the use of GI as a critical aspect of intellectual right under the WTO laws has led to provision of legal platforms that help to invent new tradition that are distortive to the original and naturalistic cultures. One of the best exemplifications of this condition was the invention of virtual culture in France in an attempt to develop Champagne as a product exhibiting geographical indications of that country (Bernhofen 2010).

It is evident that Champagne was developed for economic purposes, but it did not exist as a result of the naturalistic way of the people’s tradition. The French symbolism was used as a rubber stamp to show that the brand had unique aspects of the French culture, although it was just developed like any other products. As a result, it was a product that was basically manufactured in France, but it did not bear any momentous cultural importance in relation to the true and authentic aspects of the France people.

In fact, the use of the France national symbols in the development of this alcoholic drink was seen as part of an economically and politically oriented campaign that aided in the popularization of the drink around the world to acquire competitive advantage in the France and foreign countries. Most profoundly, the people of France adopted the drink as one of the national products hence reducing the marketability of other drinks from foreign countries.