THE NAME 'Jamaica' is a strong brand name for several commodities in the international marketplace. Under WTO rules, the Government has now moved to protect the country's geographic indication brand name.
A number of products are being fraudulently passed off as Jamaican, to reap the considerable benefits the name carries. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is a good example, which is not only a country label, but a specific location within the country, providing a certain product quality of high value in the marketplace.
The Government has already moved to strengthen the protection of the world's best coffee brand. Amendments to the Coffee Industry Regulation Act in 1998 increased penalties for local producers misrepresenting ordinary coffee as Blue Mountain coffee. The Geographical Indication Law of 2004 is designed to extend the protection of Jamaican products internationally. Companies and countries outside of the country using the name 'Jamaica' on labels, will be subject to prosecution under the WTO's 1994 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.
True to form, although we are a WTO signatory, it has taken us a decade to use the TRIPS to protect our national brand name, which external producers are finding so attractive to pirate; but better late than never.
The Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO), a recent creation, has the responsibility of policing and prosecuting, tasks that will not be easy. But the overseas Jamaican community, who are the target market for many of these fraudulent goods, will have to be tapped to help.
We should go beyond merely barring others from copying the Jamaican label, and very deliberately, push to produce for the international market, those products that others are using the Jamaica brand label to sell, and which are more often than not, of inferior quality to the genuine national product. In a sense the copiers have already identified products and niches that are worth exploiting.
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