attributable to a certain quality; reputation or other characteristics,” and that the production “takes place for at least one of its stages within the delineated geographical area.” As a corollary to the foregoing, it should be added that DOP and IGP were already protected both against practices that could «mislead the public» and against «any direct or indirect commercial use of a registered designation for products that are not the subject of registration, insofar as these latter are comparable to the products registered under such designation or insofar as the use of such designation allows for the undue exploitation of the reputation of the protected designation». Therefore, by directly protecting the reputation against all forms of parasitic exploitation, even in the absence of public deception, such signs are treated on equal terms with other distinctive signs, such as trademarks, provided that DOP and IGP designate a link between the product and the territory; in the absence of such a link, they would instead be considered equivalent to fanciful signs. The same applies to the Italian legal system, where the protection of geographical indications, extending beyond cases of public deception, was already recognized within the provisions concerning unfair competition, whose application was not excluded by the regulations pertaining to indications of origin contained in Articles 29 and 30 of the Italian Industrial Property Code (CPI) 5. In the present case, Article 30, in its original formulation, accorded protection to all denominations that met the requirements set forth in Article 29. These requirements, moreover, were even more restrictive than those provided for in the Lisbon Agreement, requiring only a link to the environment6 - specifically, the ‘reputation’ of the product itself - for protection, as is the case for Community Geographical Indications (GIs). However, this regulation becomes, moreover, even more stringent with the reform of the Industrial Property Code enacted by Legislative Decree No. 131 of August 13, 2010. By virtue of the reform, in fact, Article 30 of the Italian Industrial Property Code (CPI), which revisits the wording of Article 13.1, letter a) of Regulation No. 5 It is no coincidence that, in legal doctrine, the use of false or misleading appellations of origin is considered an instance of the misappropriation of credit (see, for example, Trib. Naples, 8 July 1996, in Dir. ind., 1996, p. 1016 et seq.; and Court of Appeal Bologna, 24 June 1996, in Giur. ann. dir. ind., 1997, no. 3598). 6 The “geographic milieu,” understood as the link between the objective characteristics of the product and the geographical environment, which our jurisprudence has consistently sought to evaluate on a case-by-case basis regarding its existence (see Court of Cassation, 28 November 1996, No. 10857, in Giurisprudenza Annuale di Diritto Industriale, 1996, No. 3565; and Court of Cassation, 10 September 2002, No. 13168, ibid., 2002, No. 4337). 383 PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL SPECIALTY GUARANTEED (TSG) IN THE EU
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