The recent controversy between the States of West Bengal and Odisha over the intellectual property (IP) rights over a sweetmeat raises several questions on the propriety of registering every regional food stuff as a geographical indication (GI).
Many a sweet and savoury dish is born into India’s rich culinary diversity. While the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration & Protection) Act, 1999 (‘the GI Act’) provides for registration of ‘food stuffs’ as GIs, the pitfalls of registering food stuffs as GIs are worth examining. Primarily, by adding a mere geographic prefix to a food stuff, it cannot be transformed into a product worthy of a GI tag. A hypothetical example would be Banglar Sandesh. Likewise, the presence of a geographic prefix will not always make a food stuff a GI. To illustrate, Mysore Pak, a quintessential south Indian sweetmeat, is made everywhere in southern India and not just in Mysore. Both these food stuffs are mere recipes and the geographical prefixes thereto do not endorse a regional origin or any other qualities or characteristics or reputation that can be associated with the respective geographies.