Promoting Local Branding Under Geographical Indication : Prospect and Challenges for Protecting Indonesian Products

• Main Author: Mas Rahmah
• Format: Book Section PeerReviewed
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: IAITL 2014
• Subjects: K Law; K1401-1578 Intellectual property
• Online Access: http://repository.unair.ac.id/98966/2/37%20ok%20PROMOTING%20LOCAL%20BRANDING%20UNDER%20GEOGRAPHICAL.pdf; http://repository.unair.ac.id/98966/3/37%20PG%20kadep.pdf; http://repository.unair.ac.id/98966/1/37t%20PROMOTING%20LOCAL%20BRANDING%20UNDER%20GEOGRAPHICAL%20INDICATION_%20PROSPECT%20AND%20CHALLENGES%20FOR%20PROTECTING%20INDONESIAN%20PRODUCTS.pdf; http://repository.unair.ac.id/98966/
• Institution: Universitas Airlangga

Indonesia has a diverse range of local products with unique quality and special characteristic associated with geographical factors such as Toraja Coffee, Deli Tobacco, Bali-Kintamani Coffee, Banda Nutmeg, Yogja Batik handcraft, etc that have gained prominence with high reputation either domestically or internationally. This paper argues that Indonesia should equip the reputation of local products and their intrinsic quality with promoting local branding under Geographical indications (GI) regime because GI protects a distinctive sign that permits the identification of products involving unique characteristics influenced by geographical factors. To visualize the above idea, this paper outlines the prospect of local branding based on GI and argues that the use of GI as a basis for local branding becomes an effective tool since it allows producers to gain competitive advantages, achieve market recognition, capture the premiums for their products in the marketplace by creating exoticness or scarcity images, differentiate their products from those produced elsewhere, and gain legal protection. However, promoting local branding under GI system looks uneasy to achieve and may spark challenges at normative and practical level. At normative level, the existing GI regulation under Indonesian trademark act is inherently insufficient because of the limited scope of protection. At practical level, the problems may arise at every step of: a) preparation and registration (b) monitoring and management, (c) promotion and marketing of GI products that are very timeconsuming and costly, requiring complicated procedures, difficult researches, multiform equipment/infrastructure and the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders. To overcome the normative challenge, the paper recommends that the sui generis law seems the best solution to provide appropriate GI protection that can accommodate the basic elements of protection and solve the problems of insufficient GI protection under trademark regime. To solve the practical challenge, the paper will draw lessons from the establishment of Indonesian “first GI” protection (Bali- Kintamani Coffee) as a model in promoting GI for other products from other origins in Indonesia.