Washington, D.C. – In a legally binding decision on October 29, 2020, the National Directorate of Intellectual Property of Paraguay officially registered the Champagne appellation. Hereafter, the Champagne appellation will be recognized and protected throughout the Paraguayan state against any misuse or derived term of its name.
Paraguay joins 122 countries, including the majority of Latin American countries, China, and India, that already protect the name Champagne, one of the most recognizable appellations in the world.
“This decision is particularly important because it is the culmination of a procedure that was initiated in 2012 and suspended between 2015 and 2019 due to the pending publication of a decree allowing the application of the Paraguayan law on geographical indications,” said Vincent Perrin, CEO of the Comité Champagne. “With this final and definitive outcome, the Comité Champagne once again illustrates its ability to successfully pioneer the implementation of new legislation regarding geographical indications in the world.”
The legal concept of appellation of origin is a specific intellectual property right that designates a product from a given region, whose particular characteristics result both from the natural conditions of the region and the know-how of local producers. While appellations of origin are numerous in most countries of the world, Champagne is among the oldest, best protected and most prestigious. The recognition in Paraguay is another step forward for the Comité Champagne, which works daily to protect the Champagne appellation throughout the world.
“Beyond this success, our priority is the complete protection of our appellation in Argentina, but also in the United States and Russia, where many legal usurpations persist,” Perrin said.
The United States is not among the 122 countries that protect the Champagne name. However, the Comité Champagne works to end the misuse of its name through the Wine Origins Alliance, a coalition of global wine regions united in their call to protect wine place names and remove all trade barriers on wine.
The Champagne Bureau, USA, is the official U.S. representative of the Comité Champagne, a trade association which represents the grape growers and houses of Champagne, France. The Bureau works to educate U.S. consumers about the uniqueness of the wines of Champagne and expand their understanding of the need to protect the Champagne name. For more information, visit us online at http://www.champagne.com.
