156 WINE LAW shared trademarks could be detrimental to geographical indications, proposing, where appropriate, some measures to guarantee adequate protection of all the interests at stake. In short, the aim is to highlight the conflict of interests that arises between the distinctive signs used to identify wine products: on the one hand, the trademarks of each operator and, on the other, the geographical indications, as collective distinctive signs used by all the operators authorised to do so. For these purposes, a shared-use trademark is understood as a trademark that is not used exclusively to identify and distinguish products covered by a specific geographical indication. In Spain, this controversy arose, several years ago, in the area of protection of geographical indications (both for agri-food and wine products). The problem has been resolved at two levels: jurisprudential, as the courts have had to resolve the conflict over the legitimacy of Regulatory Councils to prevent this use, and legal, as this possibility has been incorporated into the different regulations governing agri-food quality (both at state and regional levels). The question of the lack of recognition in Spain of geographical indications as a true form of industrial property until the approval of Law 6/2015, of 12 May, on Protected Designations of Origin and Protected Geographical Indications with a supra-autonomic territorial scope (hereinafter LDOIGP) hovers over this whole issue. At present, some of the precepts of this regulation have as their legal basis the competence title that attributes to the State exclusive competence in industrial property matters, as is the case of the provision that affects the subject of this study. In short, it is a dispute that fundamentally revolves around the valuation of the protected interests. As will be seen, although the measure is legally recognised, it is designed exclusively to favour the individual interests of the operators, as holders of a specific trademark right, to the detriment of the collective interests of the geographical indication to which they belong. Thus, the issue has been resolved, undoubtedly in favour of the interests of the operators, based on the protection of the rights conferred by their trademarks, by virtue of which they cannot be required to use trademarks exclusively for each geographical indication. The limit to this prerogative lies essentially in the obligation to avoid creating confusion for consumers through this conduct. Therefore, if operators use co-branding, they are obliged to clearly indicate the origin of the wine products on the labelling and presentation of the products and to include sufficient elements to differentiate them. However, it should be clear that wines identified with the same brand may correspond to different levels of protection (PDO, PGI and others) or products
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