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Pigs and protection: Old Spots get the TSG treatment
Commission Regulation 675/2010 of 28 July 2010 entering a name in the register of traditional specialities guaranteed (Traditionally Farmed Gloucestershire Old Spots Pork (TSG)) confers protected status upon pork produced in accordance with the Gloucester Old Spots process, which you can read about here.
In case you should ever think that the registration of GIs and TSGs is just a matter of form-filling and that you're unlikely ever to litigate a protected name, take a look at Axle Associates Ltd v Gloucestershire Old Spots Pig Breeders’ Club, a decision of the UK's Trade Mark Registry, on 13 October 2009 last year (Decision O-316-09). There, an attempt was made to oppose a UK trade mark application on the strength of this TSG application, but before it had been granted. The attempt failed. According to the headnote in the European Trade Mark Reports:
Posted by: Blog Administrator @ 08.30
"Even if a registered Traditional Specialty Guaranteed was, in principle, capable of constituting an earlier right under s.5(4) Trade Marks Act 1994, the opponent did not have an earlier right. Such a mark would only be protected from the date of publication, which would occur after registration, and this had not yet taken place. It was in any event unlikely that live pigs were a similar agricultural product to pork products, such as to fall within the scope of protection of the proposed Traditional Speciality Guaranteed mark".
Tags: TSGs,
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