Starting from this July, famous local specialties such as ‘Cheongan Chestnuts from Gongju’, ‘Geumsan Ginsengs’, ‘Seosan Garlics’, ‘Goesan Chilies’, and ‘Chungju Apples’ can be protected by the trademark right.
As the renowned specialties of the Chungcheong area were registered as a geographical indication, increasing the reputations of local celebrations and souvenirs are signaling the revitalization of the economy in chungcheong area.
As a response to such advantageous movement, self-governing bodies around the chungcheong area are putting enormous effort in researching and coping with the trademark rights of geographical indications in order to increase the quality of value-added industry.
The French champagne business can be used to illustrate the success of collective marking of geographical indications.
‘French champagne’ is recorded as generating over 500 million Won (approximately 500 thousand US Dollars) of profit from about one hector of grape farm.
This amount exceeds over 1000 times the amount of profit made by wheat farming in the nearby area.
Also, grape farm of Bourgogne, which takes up 1.8 percent of the entire area, provides 30 percent of total farming revenue.
On 29th of June, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that starting from the coming July, ‘geographical names’ of various local specialties that have exceptional quality or high reputation will become registered trademarks and be protected by trademark rights as a group brand.
Once collective marking of geographical indications is registered, it is considered as the normal registered trademark.
Therefore, products that have similar or identical brand name or geographical name cannot be registered.
A third-party individual or group who infringes the rights of the collective marking of geographical indications are now considered rights violators and can be litigated for product prohibition or compensation.

A production group or manufacturing group consisting of people who produce, manufacture, or process the related local products must apply for ‘collective marking of geographical indications’ registration in order to receive successful approval.
In addition, KIPO requires an article of association that indicates the terms of use as well as a document that proves the geographical location of the product in order to register it successfully.
Furthermore, in order to prevent intense competition and overlap of registration request between numerous production groups, KIPO is requiring each applicant to go have discussion with the local agencies regarding the registration process.

(Source: Page 8 Chungcheong Today, Date: June 30, 2005)