Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Agriculture - Uniform legislation - Protection of geographical indications and designations of origin of agricultural products and foodstuffs - Regulation No 2081/92 - Simplified procedure - Registration of legally protected names or names established by usage - Obligation of the Member State to communicate, within the six months' time-limit, the final version of the specification and the other relevant documents - Failure

(Council Regulation No 2081/92, Art. 17)

2. Agriculture - Uniform legislation - Protection of geographical indications and designations of origin of agricultural products and foodstuffs - Regulation No 2081/92 - Simplified procedure - Registration of legally protected names or names established by usage - Conditions - Requirement that the application for registration be uncontroversial in the Member State - Excluded

(Council Regulation No 2081/92, Art. 17)

3. Agriculture - Uniform legislation - Protection of geographical indications and designations of origin of agricultural products and foodstuffs - Regulation No 2081/92 - Opposition to the registration by a Member State - Purpose

(Council Regulation No 2081/92, Art. 7)

4. Community law - Principles - Right to bring an action - Obligations of national courts - Examination, notwithstanding possible national procedural rules preventing it, of the lawfulness of an application for registration of a designation forming part of a Community decision-making process

5. Agriculture - Uniform legislation - Protection of geographical indications and designations of origin of agricultural products and foodstuffs - Regulation No 2081/92 - Geographical indication - Meaning

(Council Regulation No 2081/92, Art. 2(2))

Summary

1. Article 17 of Regulation No 2081/92 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs, which provides for the simplified registration procedure, cannot be interpreted as requiring the Member States to communicate, within the six months' time-limit, the final version of the specification and the other relevant documents, so that any amendment of the specification originally submitted would lead to the application of the normal procedure.

( see para. 32 )

2. Article 17 of Regulation No 2081/92 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs may not be interpreted as meaning that its application is conditional on the application for registration being uncontroversial at national level. The requirement of such a condition, which would have considerably restricted the application of the simplified procedure, is not supported at all by the wording of that article and no more follows from the system established by Regulation No 2081/92.

( see para. 40 )

3. It follows from the wording and the scheme of Article 7 of Regulation No 2081/92 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs, that a statement of objection to a registration cannot come from the Member State which has applied for the registration and that the objection procedure established by Article 7 of that regulation is not therefore intended to settle disputes between the competent authority of the Member State which has applied for registration of a designation and a natural or legal person resident or established in that Member State.

( see para. 55 )

4. The requirement of judicial control stems from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States and is enshrined in Articles 6 and 13 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. That requirement must also be complied with with regard to a measure, such as the application for registration at issue in the main proceedings, which constitutes a necessary step in the procedure for adoption of a Community measure, where the Community institutions have only a limited or non-existent discretion with regard to that measure.

It is, therefore, for the national courts to rule on the lawfulness of an application for registration of a designation, such as that at issue in this case, on the same terms as those by which they review any definitive measure adopted by the same national authority which is capable of adversely affecting the rights of third parties under Community law, and, consequently, to regard an action brought for that purpose as admissible, even if the domestic rules of procedure do not provide for this in such a case.

( see paras 57-58 )

5. For the purposes of Article 2(2)(b) of Regulation No 2081/92 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs, as opposed to paragraph (a) of that provision, a foodstuff may be treated as originating from the geographical area concerned if it is processed or produced in that area, even if the raw materials are produced in another region.

( see para. 61 )