BBC News - Wensleydale cheese granted protected status

BBC News reports that my favourite food (after tiramisu) has been given protection - or, rather, to be precise and pedantic, its name is now protected. But actually the story reveals that the protected geographical indication is in fact the tautology (or perhaps pleonasm) 'Yorkshire Wensleydale.' According to Food Manufacture UK (which sounds to me like an oxymoron, or at least it should be) back in 2006 when an application for a protected designation of origin was made, the applicants went for the tautology because it would give them a 'quick win'. The PGI application can be read here, complete with egregious comma splice - why can whoever commissions these documents not find someone familiar with the rules of English grammar, and with some notion of style, to do the work? And the application as published in the Official Journal C231 09.08.2013 (without comma splice) is here. But it looks to me as if the application that was originally made (dated 2007) was for a PDO and has resulted in the registration of a PGI. (It's not as if a PDO has been cancelled: the distinction of being the only UK registration to be cancelled is the Newcastle Brown Ale PGI, which became necessary when brewing was moved to what might be called the wrong side of the Tyne, though having been born in County Durham and raised there until the implication of the Redcliffe-Maud Report I would never use that expression). So they went for the more exclusive right and settled for the weaker one.

Where do you think Stilton cheese is made?

If you thought it comes from Stilton, you'd be wrong. The PDO allows eight producers, none of them in Stilton, to produce the cheese, so a cheesemaker in Stilton cannot call their product Stilton cheese. It was, apparently, given the name because it was supplied in coaching inns there.

Cheese names are a complete mess, with Cheddar coming from anywhere in the world, not just Cheddar (in other words, the name has become generic for a particular type of cheese - indeed, a pretty generic type of cheese) and other abominations (IMHO) like Somerset Brie - and Danish Feta, if I remember correctly ... Whatever the reasons for Stilton being called Stilton, no-one is going to be deceived if cheese made there bears the name of the village, and the system is only going to be brought into disrepute if the present situation is allowed to pertain.

The Telegraph reports that DEFRA is being asked to change the rules, and if it accepts that there is a case for change the matter will go out to consultation for twelve weeks. Watch this space!

Rights in town design

A Chinese developer is creating a replica of Hallstadt, an Austrian town that is a popular tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and for which the word "picturesque" seems to be a colossal understatement, according to Chris MacDonough on the Washington College of Law blog (following a story in the Washington Post). Chris speculates about the position under intellectual property laws, and concludes that there's not much to be done about it. Maybe it's a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Maybe there's a case for extending protection for geographical indications - not just to cover the situation where a producer pretends that his goods have come from somewhere else, but also where somewhere pretends to be somewhere else. But that wouldn't help - who's going to think they are in Austria when they are clearly in the ersatz Chinese version? There'll be no pretence involved. Trade mark infringement? Only if the Chinese were very unwise in what they call it. Copyright? Well, of course it subsists in works of architecture and in maps and plans - but a work of architecture is defined in terms of single structures, not entire settlements, and maps and plans can be created from measurements (which is what the developer seems to have done here, from the reports). Of course reproducing Hallstadt will necessarily involve copying the designs of individual buildings, but it sounds as if the architects have probably been dead for so long that even a bit of Disney-style lobbynomics isn't likely to help them. They probably did their work before town planning was thought up. So an interesting case study, but one that clearly points up the limitations of intellectual property laws. And it's a good thing too.