The 47th Session of the Standing Committee of the 13th Guangdong People's Congress has deliberated and approved the Guangdong Geographical Indication Protection Regulation, which will be effective on January 1, 2023. As the country's first comprehensive local GI act, the Regulation's pioneering move in GI local legislation has sparked widespread attention.

"The Regulation attends to those realistic issues concerning GI industry development, puts serving regional economic development as a key gist, fills the gap of GI branding work and shores up the fundamental elements supporting industry development to contribute to GI industry development and rural revitalization," an executive from Guangdong IP Administration told our China IP News reporter.

Regulate every link and use legal tools to make practice hold

"Thanks to an early start and rapid development, GI protection in Guangdong is highly market-driven. For lack of specialized legislations, many entrenched issues cannot be solved. Happy to apply but less enthusiastic to use, high cost for enforcing right, paper-thin price margins of products are some of the existing problems, which, to a certain degree, have discounted the market reputation and competitiveness of GI products," said Huang Xiantao, Director, GI Research Center, IP Development Research Institute of Peking University in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay.

One big quality of the Regulation is building a GI protection system that seamlessly links with relevant national rules. On the one hand, the linkage aims to refine the GI protection system, effectively connects the national-level authority with local legislation and elevate the quality of legislative coverage of GI protection. On the other hand, in an effort to ramp up deterrence to GI violations, the Regulation emulates the Product Quality Law, providing for liabilities of GI violations. IP administrations above county level are vested with the authority to order rectification on a given time frame, seize products produced or sold illegally and impose fines under the equivalent value of the goods produced or sold. Illegal gains, if there is any, shall be seized. If the violation runs counter to the Trademark Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law or other laws or regulations, the involved legislation shall be applied. If a criminal offense is triggered, criminal prosecution shall be sought.

In addition, in an effort to solve those popular and difficult problems impeding industry development, the Regulation plays up Guangdong's strength of a highly open market and dynamic external trade, conduct censuses of GI resources and bolster protection, build and improve a full GI industry development system, boost elevation of quality and efficiency of the industry, perform international cooperation, use multiple measures to refine the GI use system and upgrade GI products' market competitiveness and international influence.

Upgrade across the board and industry develops well

"Supporting and guiding the development of the industry with local distinctiveness" is what the Regulation lives for. In a bid to shift the industry's heavy focus from registration to use and protection and from quantity to quality, the Regulation uses rearing trade markets, innovation, promotion of GIs and brand nurturing, integrated industry development as penetration points to inspire various players in the province to drive up added value and brand influence of GI products.

At the recent Sixth China-South Asia Expo, a slew of GI products with Guangdong signature caught the eyeballs of Chinese and foreign visitors immediately after their showing. Huazhou pummelo peel is one of the them. "Since our pummelo peel was awarded GI protection in 2006, the pertinent industry has been booming, so have brand reputation and thousands of farmers' bank accounts," said Li Feng, Chair of the Board of Huazhou Pummelo Peel Medicine Materials Development Company - one of the authorized users of the Huazhou pummelo peel GI special symbol. The release and enactment of the Regulation, according to Li, has drawn a baseline for our line of business to operate within the confines of the law with liabilities for GI violations clearly provided as well, which is crucial for regulating the order of Huazhou pummelo peel GI product market.

Home to 162 GI products and 118 GI trademarks; 10 GI products selected into the China-EU GI mutual protection list; 4 national-level GI protection model areas... Guangdong has been playing the distinctiveness card, digging up the cultural meaning of GI products and turning resource edge to economic edge. With the drive of the Regulation, Guangdong is striding down the road that adds value to GI industry through transformation from product to industry as well as from quantity to efficiency.