42 WINE LAW requirement of the usable first foodstuff17. Moreover, it might be worth insisting that the Commission calls for consistency in the quality system, whatever the scope. The set up of peculiarities for wine geographical designations might be necessary at some stage, but it will certainly not require separate regulation. 2.2. The Controversial Differentiation of Designations of Origin and Geographical Indications Attention should be drawn to the boundaries between designations of origin and geographical indications, as they have always been regulated in the same documents, since the original 1992 text, apparently without articulating relevant dissimilarities in their definitions18. This has led some scholars to raise doubts as to whether these two concepts should be kept as distinct19, bearing in mind that the legal framework is fundamentally the same for both. It should be noted that Strasburg Professor Laure Marino – an expert in intellectual and industrial property – does not view the geographical indication instituted in European law as a properly separate category from the designation of origin, but rather as a qualified version thereof. Marino would then posit an umbrella category of “geographical designations”, within which there would be “designations of origin” and “geographical indications”, which, in turn, would split into “basic geographical indications” (studied above) and “protected geographical indications” (the category we are now studying)20. Whether or not we agree with this taxonomy, it can be accepted that, while designations of origin reveal an undeniably specific nature, which would justify separate studies, the same cannot be said so categorically of geographical indications. Let us try and draw their limits within European law, starting by differentiating wine and non-wine geographical indications. 17 Even this may not be necessary. The norms concerning the allowed vine varieties come into the Regulation further into it. Both the current one (art. 83) and previous ones impose the Vitis variety for all wines, and the 1999 iteration mentioned the Vitis vinífera as the only variety apt for QWpsr. 18 In one of the first studies of the 1992 Regulation by renowned scholars, Luigi Costato remarked that “both definitions were fundamentally the same”. COSTATO, L. (1995). “La protezione delle indicazioni geografiche e delle denominazioni d’origine e le attestazioni di specificità”, Rivista di Diritto Agrario, 4, p. 492 (the author warns that the study was finished in 1992). 19 Oliveira Ascensão, a Portuguese Civil Law expert, claims bluntly that this binary concept is a “fallacious introduction”. OLIVEIRA ASCENSÃO, J. (2005). “Questões problemáticas em sede de indicações geográficas e denominações de origem”, Revista da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa, book XLXV, no. 1, p. 262. 20 MARINO, L. (2013). Droit de la propriété industrielle, 8th ed., Dalloz, París, pp. 124-127.
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