This applies first and foremost to patent protection. On one hand, in fact, it represents the fundamental incentive to create new technical solutions that respond to new needs, and thus today also that of having new technologies compatible with the protection of the environment and the future of the world, allowing each company to profit from the results of its research through the right to the exclusive exploitation thereof, a right which in the presence of widespread needs such as the environmental one the holder has an interest in exerting through the grant of licenses (even open licenses), as typically happens with patents that may become the standard of a sector. On the other hand (and this is an aspect that we tend to forget), it ensures that the conceptual content of the invention, precisely because it is the subject of a patent, becomes “public domain” from the first day of publication of the relevant application (which must mandatorily contain all the teachings to implement the invention), ensuring a fruitful circulation of information for competitors and researchers, private and public, and thus fueling competition and especially the making of new innovations, alternative or derived from the former. The agri-food sector is by no means excluded from this possibility: for example, the European Patent Office has granted a patent for an agronomic method by which a residual concentration of phytosanitary active ingredients of less than 0.01 mg/kg can be achieved in harvested products, despite their use in cultivation, and has similarly granted a patent for a method of oenological stabilization. Another example of innovative technology of relevant importance in the agri-food field, and in particular in the field of sustainable agriculture, is Blockchain. One of its most important application concerns the management of production chains, which with the use of this technology can be more easily traced and guaranteed by collective and certification marks, which today represent increasingly important added values for the companies, that through the use of them may inform the consumers of their commitment to issues such as ethics and sustainability: thus the Blockchain virtuously (and safely) integrates the real and virtual worlds2. Indeed, it is important to note how 2 On the topic, see A. Rainone, La proprietà intellettuale e la tracciabilità della filiera agroalimentare di fronte alle nuove tecnologie, in Il dir. ind., 2023, 33 ff, with extensive references precisely to blockchain technology and, in particular, to the role it plays in relation to the very notion of “traceability” as defined by E.U. Regulation No. 178/2002 and the possibility of considering it in accordance with the provisions of E.U. Regulation No. 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, as well as with the experiments conducted as part of the “Track- It” project of the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) regarding the potential of this technology in export chains and in the fight against Italian Sounding; P. Lessio, Blockchain e tracciabilità della filiera, in M. Giordano - R. Battaglini, Blockchain e smart contract. Funzionamento, profili giuridici e internazionali, applicazioni pratiche, Milan, 2019, p. 513 et seq.; and N. Patelli - M. Mandrioli, Blockchain 109 WINE TOURISM AND SUSTAINABILITY: NEW “GREEN TRADEMARKS”
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