India vs. Pakistan: Basmati Battle at the European Union

India and Pakistan are at loggerheads again, however, for a change, this time the battleground is the European Union (EU). Pakistan is planning to oppose India’s Geographical Indication (GI) claim over Basmati rice. As per EU’s official report, India submitted the GI tag registration application in September 2020, stating, “Basmati is grown in various parts of India as a special long grain aromatic rice. It is raised and produced in a particular geographical region of the Indian sub-continent, below the foothills of the Himalayas. The area is a part in northern India, below the foothills of the Himalayas forming a part of the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP).” Since India has already applied for the GI tag of Basmati rice , it will have the sole ownership if Pakistan’s opposition fails.

Source- https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/long-grain-indian-basmati-rice-21292560073.html

We do not claim any copyright in the image used. It has been used for academic and representational purposes only

Reports suggest that Pakistan decided to oppose India’s claim at the European Union during a meeting which was attended by Secretary Commerce, Chairman, Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO-Pakistan), representatives of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP), along with the legal fraternity, and chaired by the adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Razak Dawood.  The Ministry issued a statement soon after the meeting stating, “Pakistan will vehemently oppose the claim within the EU and restrain India from obtaining exclusive Geographical Indication (GI) tag of Basmati rice.”

The data shared by the Agricultural and Processed Food Export Development Authority suggests that India produces about 7.5 million tonnes of Basmati rice. In FY 2019-20 India exported around 60% or 4.45 million tonnes of Basmati rice, valuing US $ 4.33 billion. Whereas, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan exported Basmati rice worth US $ 790.8 million. Basmati rice in Pakistan is grown mainly in its Punjab province.

The Regulation (EU) No. 1151/2012 of the European Parliament dated 21st November, 2012, on quality schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs provides an option to countries for filing an opposition to a GI claim within a period of 3 months from the date of publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Pakistan enacted its GI (Registration and Protection) Act in March 2020, but has not implemented it yet. The GI Act, once implemented, will provide Pakistan the right to oppose India’s application for GI Tag registration. However, it has already been more than 15 days post the notification of India's claim. Now Pakistan has less than 10 weeks for opposing India’s claim and filing a counter application with the EU, convince it that Pakistan has maintained the exclusivity of its regions cultivating Basmati. The same would involve internal talks and negotiations. It remains to be seen if Pakistan keeps up with the crushing timeline.

Ary Rosenbaum: "Marketing is sometimes, just marketing"

 

The Miller Lite Ads did not inspire to drink beer, but the advertisements were comedy gems from Rodney Dangerfield, Billy Martin, John Madden, Red Auerbach, and a whole host of other sports celebrities (and writer Mickey Spillane for some reason). Less filling, tastes great were the rival chants and Lite Beer from Miller was the first and most successful light beer (until surpassed by Bud Light and Coors Light).

If you drink the beer and you have a sense of taste, you know it’s not very good. It was more marketing that a decent beer recipe. While you may be enticed by the great marketing of a plan provider, you need to dig deeper under the surface to make sure they can do the job. When it comes to marketing, there is nothing wrong to buy on “sizzle”, as long as there is some steak.

CHINA: State administration for market regulation issued the draft of trade secrets protection provisions

The State Administration for Market Regulation has recently issued a draft version of Trade Secrets Protection provisions. The SAMR is waiting for public feedback. The draft shines a light on trade secrets infringement, also taking into consideration the situation when the customer list is protected, as a trade secret.

The first law document regulated trade secrets infringement was the Prohibition of Trade Secret Infringement (1998). The structure was quite simple: it didn’t have any chapters, subdivisions or parts, it only comprised 12 articles. After amending law articles about the protection of trade secrets in Anti-Unfair Competition Law (2019), the Chinese government decided to unify the content of law articles of these documents. The draft of Trade Secrets Protection provisions is proposed to have six chapters structured with 39 law articles. If the Chinese government approves this draft, six chapters will regulate the following issues: chapter 1 - general provisions; chapter 2 - Trade secrets definitions; chapter 3 - Infringement on trade secrets; chapter 4 - Investigation and punishment measures applied to infringers on trade secrets; chapter 5 - Liabilities and chapter 6 - Miscellaneous.

The main amendments of Trade Secrets Protection provisions are:

1) the draft explains article 9 of the amended version of Anti-Unfair Competition Law regarding trade secrets constituent elements (unknown to the public, their business value and confidentiality measures);

2) the draft reviews trade secret infringement and recommends including additional information about the applicable law to trade secrets acts;

3) the document includes circumstances in which the third parties become involved in the infringement act of trade secrets;

4) elaboration of principles in which a customer list can be considered, as a trade secret;

5) the liabilities of market regulators above county level are to be written in the document;

6) if the real right owner reveals a trade secret infringement act, they will have to prove it, providing sufficient and persuasive evidence. Otherwise, it won’t be possible to claim an infringement trade secrets act. Besides, the real right holder is encouraged to consult experts before accusing a party of an infringement act. These actions will increase the right holder potential to win a trial.

7) the notion of truth of the evidence and assessment principles are in the draft document.

The miscellaneous section of the draft suggests clarifying two main points. The first concerns the exceptions to the protection of trade secrets. In other words, if trade secrets belonging to the category of state secrets or they violate rules, regulation or cause any harm to the national/social interests, they are out of the protection domain of the draft. The second considers provisions of foreign cases, taking into account the hierarchical division of jurisdictions.

[Source:Schmitt & Orlov - https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/cc581cd4-2380-4498-90ee-f6dc2cf738e7.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1601908150&Signature=%2BTl9j%2F2IaW1VDXK7oI%2FWDpmkP90%3D]

 

Raumly Sat Down with Mr. Luis González Vaqué to Discuss Sharing Economy

• Publicado el 2 de octubre de 2020

Estado: localizable

Ivan Golovko

CEO at Raumly

 resources.

Hey guys! We at Raumly strongly believe in collaborative consumption and the growing potential of sharing economy.

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing the Director of Food and Agrarian Policies of the “Fundació Triptolemos” (Barcelona), Mr. Luis González Vaqué.

If you don’t know who he is, let us give you a brief about his glorious contribution to the Agriculture and food economy in Barcelona, Spain. Finishing his education in Consumer and Food Law in 1965, he diligently worked to provide sound legal advice in this field for the next 15 years.

In 1980, it was time for him to step up as Legal Adviser of Prosema, organiser of “Alimentaria”, the International Food Show of Barcelona. Since taking that step he has never looked back.

He has worked with numerous leading organizations during his extraordinary career such as the Council of the European Food Law Association (EFLA), Food, Plant and Animal Law Services of FAO, in Rome (Italy), and others.

He also has a strong belief in the emerging sharing economy and how it can change the world for the better. When we at Raumly got to know this, we were not going to leave our chance to know his views on the same.

That’s why we sat down with him and asked a few questions regarding the same. It did add to our perspective on sharing economy and gave us the motivation to dig in even more to bring out the best services on our platform.

We wanted to share the knowledge with you and hence read on to know what we asked and what he had to say.

1. Could you please tell our readers a bit about you and when did you sense that Sharing Economy has potential? How did you venture into it?

My interest in the sharing economy was the result of the first motions and documents of the European Parliament on this subject. I immediately sensed that it had a promising future, but that it also posed some problems, for example with regard to taxes and workers’ rights.

I am particularly interested in the development of this collaborative economy in the food sector, to which I have dedicated a large part of my professional career from a legal perspective.

2. What do you consider to be the driving factors for customers to dive into sharing resources and collaborative consumption?

From a socio-political perspective, I believe that citizens should value its more equitable character and the more direct relationship between users and consumers that the shared economy implies. However, getting this message and information to our compatriots is not easy nor obvious.

3. Do you think the millennial and GenZ population is more inclined towards sharing resources? If so, why?

They are our future and I hope they know how to amend our mistakes and improve the current economic system; anyway, although I am generally optimistic, in some cases there is a deed in young people a tendency to deviate towards in solidarity and new individualism …

4. So, currently Covid-19 hit the market and affected businesses. It’s definitely made people skeptical about sharing things. How do you think this segment could make a comeback or come into focus again?

There are many and very diverse opinions about what will happen when, finally, thanks to a vaccine, the current pandemic ends: some think that everything will improve, that people will be ‘better’, more generous and responsible. I’m afraid not … I think everything will go back to the way it was before, for better or for worse. The sharing economy and those who support and/or perform it will have to continue to struggle against the opposition of some lobbies and the indifference of the majority. We will still need a long period to inform and convince our fellow citizens of its advantages.

5. Do you see sharing economy/resources having any environmental impact as it’s portrayed in the media?

As I have said before, it is necessary to make a great informative effort; to date, the media have disseminated only partial or fragmentary information about conflictive sectors of the collaborative economy. I repeat: it is about informing exhaustively and convincing our fellow citizens with the veracity of a friendly solidarity economy, effective and at a human level.

6. Any closing remarks that you’d like to add

I will not fatigue of repeating it: the sharing economy must be seen and understood for what it is, not as it sometimes seems to be, or even in some cases, it is … a method to take advantage of workers, evade taxes, and so on. Authenticity, efficient work, advantageous results, and good information should be the three columns on which to support this new future that we all want.

It was certainly a pleasure to talk to Mr. Luis González Vaqué about the impact the sharing economy can have on our future. We sincerely thank him to take time out of his busy schedule and do this interview with us. We are fortunate to know him and stay in touch with him in the future to build the sharing economy space efficiently

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Through this interview, our team at Raumly understood the need to inform the crowd exhaustively about the benefits of sharing resources and collaborative consumption. We also got an insight into how millennials and GenZ can be elementary in promoting the sharing of resources. Moreover, how they are carving a niche of new individualism through the sharing economy. In addition to the above, it also gave us know-how about how under the guise of sharing economy most major companies might be exploiting worker’s rights and taxes.

As an emerging sharing platform like ourselves, we decide to learn and consider new perspectives in this field from visionaries such as Mr. Luis González Vaqué. 

Now that you have reached the end of the post, we would leave you with this question, ‘What are your views on sharing economy and how can we build a sustainable future with it?’ 

Comment down below your views. We will be glad to engage in a further discussion on the same.