Does the USPTO have a GI register or a list of GIs?
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does not have a special register for GIs in the United States. The United States has protected marks that are geographical indications through the trademark system for decades, long before the term “geographical indications” came into use in 1995 with the negotiation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Our trademark register contains GIs registered as trademarks, certification marks and collective marks and these are not designated with any special field as “geographical indications.” Because of the flexible protection offered through U.S. trademark law for all marks, including those that meet the WTO TRIPS definition of a “geographical indication,” USPTO does not identify marks as GIs and does not examine marks on that basis. USPTO does examine whether the mark functions as a source identifier to the United States consuming public, the same analysis as fo
