I think it's important to notice that the point is not to keep how to make the cheese secret.
The recipe for the cheese is actually encoded in the law, and you can download it freely ( https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/it/consorzio-disciplinare..., in italian).
During lockdown I was trying to make a regional cheese, and the law was the best recipe I could find, with extremely detailed steps.
I think they are trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming, as consumers associate the "something" with the knock off.
I saw it a lot in recent years in the UK, even knowledgeable people end up buying "parmesan style" cheese and refer to it as parmesan, when the taste is not the same.
To protect the name in general, they might be going after every instance of the "style" usage, even if in this case it's clear there is no intention to trick, and probably no commercial incentive.
> trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming
The law prohibits exactly this. From the Wikipedia article [1]:
[Under Protected Geographical Status laws] it is also prohibited to combine the indication with words such as "style", "type", "imitation", or "method" in connection with the protected indications
But that should only apply to products, not to video titles describing how to execute the recipe, right? Otherwise I guess you could title the video "how to make cheese using the official recipe for Grana Padano, with the understanding that this will not result in Grana Padano cheese"
Sorry, gonna go out on a limb and say you don’t try a lot of wines. Australia has some really great wines, both reds (Shiraz) and more recently whites (their Chardonnays are as good most of Napa’s). Their wine production is ~half of the USA, despite their much lower population and they export quite a lot of it (40 or 50%, I forget the exact number).
The legal thing and more common thing in the US is “Compare with <brand X>”, which doesn’t imply equality but does give away that it’s some kind of clone
I'd be curious about a legal opinion, but as far as I understand it, the restrictions would only apply to actual commercial products. But he isn't actually selling the cheese as far as I know (only selling a video how to make the cheese).
I can't help but feel that going around cease and desisting people that are passionately pursuing hobbies is a really bad idea.
It reminds me of when the word Champagne was taken to court. The court ruled that the word could only be used by wine makers in the given region. What this resulted in was not I believe good for the Champagne region, despite the intent.
The mind share for that word went down. Instead we found ourselves hearing people asking for Prosecco or bubbly. Champagne might now be able to assert that only the'quality' product from their region has the name, but I suspect it's just caused the companies that produce wine to make sure that they own the trademark, and push their brand, not the term champagne. Regardless of whether it's from that region.
On the flip side there are several products in Europe (and potentially elsewhere) that use the term Aussie or Australian, and they're not actually Australian businesses[1]. Both were originally American businesses.
So I get the need for some level of origin protection. Both of the Australian products imply something that isn't accurate, either manufacturing or ingredients.
The problem is that there are always others who will piggyback of your product to boost their own sales, while not maintaining the quality standards that led to the name recognition in the first place.
In California they also sell "Californian Champagne", some legal quirk allows it. There is no problem with their wine, it's fine wine (the one time I had it).
It's just NOT Champagne. That doesn't make it bad wine, but it's just distinctively not the same product. Just like Prosecco is also not Champagne.
And if you don't protect your name soon "Champagne" doesn't mean anything anymore, including for the original, quality maintaining, wine makers from the Champagne region in France.
How comparable is that to ignoring other countries trademarks/patents? Couldn't the same argument be used to justify Chinese patent/IP theft, as American patent law does not apply in China?
What are the legal difference here why one of these is defensible because of "not their jurisdiction", and the other is something whole economies get sanctioned over even tho patent jurisdiction also doesn't apply?
But the US being signatory to something does not mean that everybody else is a signatory too.
The closest to that I could actually find is the World Intellectual Property Organization for trademarks.
But afaik copyrights and patents entirely depend on separate registrations in the individual countries, the only thing the WIPO helps with patents is simplifying the patent application process by filing it in multiple countries for the applicant, but those filings can still be denied by the individual countries. [0]
In that context I just find it a bit curious how American "trademark" theft of EU PDO is handwaved away with "no jurisdiction", yet the American government still insists that its patents, trademarks and IP be respected everywhere around the world, even in places where it too has no jurisdiction.
The American government insists that patents, trademarks, and copyrights are respected worldwide without jurisdiction because they got everyone else in the room to agree to do that in exchange for import market access. That's why the WTO TRIPS agreement exists. Everyone agreed to the same laws, and agreed to allow foreigners to sue domestic businesses, so it doesn't matter who has jurisdiction over what. America doesn't buy your cheese unless you agree to protect their movies. The only outliers are countries which have already pissed off America so much that market access without regime change is off the table. So, if you see someone say, for example, "but DMCA doesn't apply in my country", they're either wrong, or you should start looking up the export regulations involved with knowingly talking to Iranians before you wind up in federal prison.
This isn't even exclusively an American problem. The EU and Japan do it too, and more countries will start doing that as they start getting stronger domestic creative industries. The more money a country makes from owning copyrighted works, the more protection they will demand from other countries. Hell, the last major copyright term extension (the "Sonny Bono" one in the US) was started by the EU doing the same thing to America. The EU passed a term extension that had a reciprocality requirement: if America didn't agree to the term extension, then American works would enter the public domain in the EU quicker than EU-origin works did. This is a fiendishly clever way to ratchet in term extensions, and it works because the WTO treaties only specify maximums for copyright exceptions, not protection. You're always allowed to go stricter.
As far as I can tell, TRIPS includes the EU PDO protections, so why are US companies selling "fake" EU food products when the US government agreed to respect EU PDO trough TRIPS? Do EU companies simply not sue against that in US courts? I tried looking for cases like that, but I couldn't really find any examples.
> Everyone agreed to the same laws, and agreed to allow foreigners to sue domestic businesses, so it doesn't matter who has jurisdiction over what.
China is also member of TRIPS, don't have Americans the right to sue in China? Why is that not good enough when it's apparently good enough for EU PDO being violated in the US?
I'm not privy to the trade negotiations involved, but WTO rules don't get 1:1 copied into local law. For example, TRIPS just says countries need to have adequate legal protection for DRM, but DMCA Section 1201 takes that as an excuse to create an anticircumvention regime far stricter than required by TRIPS. I'm also somewhat confident that you can't sue if PDOs weren't locally implemented; even if the US promised to implement them but never got around to it.
I have no idea what hurdles are involved with suing entities in China. I just know that many copyright owners find it too expensive to do so. Presumably, you'd need authorized legal representation in China to sue, which could be even more expensive. Legal translation would also be required, which would also cost money. These are all issues that current international law doesn't cover. Each jurisdiction is allowed to have it's own licensing standards and working languages. The closest thing I could think of to harmonizing that would be something like ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement), a process so onerous even the country that invented it hates them.
There's plenty of other small deviations from WIPO law that member countries have sort-of gotten away with, such as...
1. Moral rights - Canada makes them waivable, which basically makes them meaningless. The US went a step further and never bothered to implement them, arguing that economic rights and contracts were sufficient to protect moral rights. (On the other hand, the US did implement moral rights in VARA, which is why the 5Pointz artists were able to sue and win millions when the property owner badly whitewashed over their authorized graffiti.)
2. Copyright formalities - We spent a literal century trying to get rid of copyright formalities, leading to the world of today where everything is born copyrighted and it is literally impossible for something to fall out of copyright until it has been escheated to the public domain. However, if you do not register your copyright in the US, you cannot sue. Even if you register after-the-fact, you lose your statutory damages if the infringement happened before registration. For the vast majority of infringements, that means there's no money in enforcing your copyright, and all you can really get is some kind of a restraining order on the infringer.
Just as the case with US disrespect/neglect of provincial specific good restrictions, other countries also don't fully enforce our [American] notions of intellectual property rights.
> In California they also sell "Californian Champagne", some legal quirk allows it.
It basically depends on the trade deal. Anywhere in the EU, "Champagne" has a very definite geographic meaning involving a region in France. Likewise "Feta" cheese, "Port" wine etc etc.
But elsewhere it depends on the nature of the deal with the EU.
E.g. Western Cape, South Africa makes good sparkling wine, but the EU flexed muscles in the trade deal, and now they don't call it "Champagne" or even "Champagne-style". 1) Though local "Port" and "Feta" got to keep those names.
I assume that the USA had a stronger hand and got a better deal in this regard.
A quirk of brexit is that the name "Scotch" Whisky may lose EU protection. 2) To Scotland's loss here.
Or to put it differently, The US cheese industry has strong protection from the EU cheese industry's naming rules.
For Feta:
> According to the relevant EU legislation, only those cheeses produced in a traditional way in particular areas of Greece (Peloponnese, Central Greece, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, and the islands of Lesbos and Cephalonia), which are made from sheep's milk, or from a mixture of sheep's and up to 30% of goat's milk from the same area, can be called feta
I would assume though that US or ZA feta is _never_ exported and sold anywhere in the EU under that name. That would be against the laws in place where it is sold.
> Or to put it differently, The US cheese industry has strong protection from the EU cheese industry's naming rules.
I suppose. Anyway, this is like buying hamburger meat and discovering it's made out of ostrich.
I think there's a big difference between making it illegal to name something because it wasn't manufactured in a certain spot, versus making it illegal because it's a completely different product. I couldn't care less if Feta was made in Greece or not. But Feta from cow's milk isn't Feta, any more than a peanut butter sandwich made with hummus isn't a peanut butter sandwich.
Champagne continues to maintain a pretty solid price premium though? The case of Moet-Chandon is instructive: the French variety usually retails for a solid $20/bottle more than Chandon's Australian or Californian wines, even though they're all made by the same house and the same methode champenoise.
But that's exactly my point. I hear people talking about bottles of 'Moet', not champagne.
I've been given or bought several Moet-Chandon bottles over the years, and I would not be able to tell you with certainty whether they were filled with wine from the Champagne region. Anecdotal for sure.
I would also argue that you could use any reasonably French sounding place name, 'Trois-Rivières' and people would make assumptions.
The price premium applies to all champagne though. Even the cheapest ones (eg the one at Aldi) start from $30, while basically indistinguishable if not superior prosecco/cava/sparkling can be had for $10.
Putting a good $15 bottle on the table doesn't tell your friends "I really want to celebrate this. It's a special occasion to me". The $35 champagne that might inded be worse, does. Especially if you are the kind that often drinks the $15 ones!
And that's imho the selling point of (at least the lower end) champagne. I still do that occasionally. A $20 difference is a pretty small price for a "signal". It's not stupid just because the content is indistinguishable. I pay for the label - because the label is the effect! It's the product!
That's also why such producers need to be careful with others using their name. They are selling a name while everyone else is selling wine.
I must be in a casual social circle because a popping a 5 bottle of bubbly is just as celebratory. The idea of getting out “the good alcohol” for a special occasion is so foreign to me.
And most of the price difference results from cachet anyway. A benefit of living in France is that there are plenty of great wines available for less than 10 Euros. They don't get exported because, I'd imagine, it's probably not cost-effective to do so.
> The mind share for that word went down. Instead we found ourselves hearing people asking for Prosecco or bubbly. Champagne might now be able to assert that only the'quality' product from their region has the name, but I suspect it's just caused the companies that produce wine to make sure that they own the trademark, and push their brand, not the term champagne. Regardless of whether it's from that region.
I haven't noticed a substantial change. Most people in the US I meet that aren't really into wine still use "champagne" to refer to sparkling wine. I was actually looking at making mimosas the other day and picked out a bottle of okay sparkling wine (it seems silly to mix expensive wine with OJ to me), and my SO commented that mimosas she thought mimosas had to use champagne. I picked her brain about it (I was shocked someone would pay for champagne for a normal Saturday mimosa), and she thought champagne was a totally distinct thing from sparkling wine. She thought sparkling wine was force carbonated like beer, or maybe just flat wine mixed with seltzer water like a wine spritzer. She didn't know what prosecco was, and when I told her, she said she would call that champagne.
I don't think their campaign has had much of an effect on the average American. It makes a difference to connoisseurs, but the average American doesn't know the technical difference (and likely has never had true champagne, because of the relatively high price).
I find that's generally true of culinary things in America, though. Many of my friends buy their wine from gas stations and are happy with it, which I struggle with. They typically only stock bottom of the barrel stuff like Barefoot; the white wines taste more like apple juice with vodka mixed in it than a real wine. The reds are generally exceptionally sweet; even full bodied reds lack the flavor and feel of tannins (probably to increase the appeal among people that hear cabernet sauvignon is a good wine, but don't know they don't like full bodied wines).
It's really a shame. There are some quite good wines in the cheap range (especially if you go for less traditional regions, like South Africa), but gas stations don't carry them and people tend to judge the region for unfair reasons. I get shocked looks if I open a bottle from Argentina or South Africa, as if wine is only meant for the wealthy and the grape vines can sense if they're in an economically disadvantaged country and will refuse to produce good grapes until you transplant them to a country with a higher GDP per capita.
It's an interesting counter example. I don't consider myself much of a wine connoisseur (I rarely drink at all).
I do like to pay attention to it a little from a business perspective. It's one of so many interesting case studies of the differences between the perception of how it works and is owned and how it actually is.
It doesn't hurt that I actually spent a bunch of my teenage years picking grapes in a wine region in Australia. The fact that I can follow them from how their grown and fill in the ownership of the wine companies and the marketing.
Case in point, I'm in Estonia at the moment and among the Australian Wines on sale here is Yellow Tail. In Australia however it doesn't have much of a reputation. IMO It's not what you would pick if you were looking for a 'nice' local Australian wine. Yet it has global distribution and reach (I've seen it elsewhere as well).
Do people really get fooled by this? For example if someone buys a "champagne" made in the UK, surely they must know this is not a real thing? And if they don't know then what difference does it make? If the real champagne is out of their budget, are they going to save money or buy something else in their price range?
Why would you say it’s not the real thing? Defining champagne to be made in a specific region of France is a cop-out. That is almost a meaningless definition because even within the region there are different types and recipes being used. It’s not like they have magical grapes. Sure it might taste a little different due to regional differences but that doesn’t make it worse or even not champagne. Whether it’s quality has to do with the vineyard rather than the geographic region.
If it’s bad because it cuts corners and uses cheap ingredients then that’s the problem.
I'm skeptical of this excuse, considering megacorps don't seem to be this zealous about defending their trademarks. For instance, Mcdonald's doesn't seem to mind people making youtube videos on how to make big mac sauce[1]. There's plenty of videos that don't even have the "style" qualifier and even go as far as claim it makes the original sauce.
I'd guess most of you don't know that "parmesan" (in the US, and elsewhere) is nothing like the real "parmigiano reggiano". It's tens of times cheaper to produce, and I'd venture to say that it might as well be several times less healthy than the original.
Same thing for "grana padano".
If you don't know anything about wood pulp in the parmesan, or fake olive oil, I suggest you read "real food, fake food" [0]. It opened my eyes.
I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes.
I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell.
> I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes.
It's not "otherwise stupid" it _is_ stupid. They should be going after the counterfeiters not someone who is both trying to educate people on making as authentic a cheese as possible while simultaneously making very clear that his cheese is not a true grana padano. Personally after seeing the consortium act like this, I consider all their other actions suspect. In my mind, this weakens their legitimacy as an organization. I'm sure I'm not the only person with this reaction.
> I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell.
> it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell.
While that's a great goal, I wonder why a few categories like champagne and apparently 'grada padano' are trying to protect the category name instead of just the brand like most other types of product?
I can buy the $5-for-a-plastic-gallon unbranded tequila or I can buy the $60 Don Julio tequila or some of the very expensive tequilas. Their reputation (or lack of) is in the brand, not in the alcohol category word "tequila".
> trying to educate people on making as authentic a cheese as possible
That's the problem. It's never going to be authentic. These kind of cheeses are not just about a recipe; they're also about the ingredients. I don't recall the specific details for grana padano, but to give you an example, the "prosciutto di Parma" is made from pigs who eat a specific type of food that derives from a specific process involving a specific breed of cows (in the nearby area), etc.
You can't simply substitute the ingredient and think that it's going to be the same. It's not. And yet, you think it's "authentic".
This kind of attitude is one of the stupidest things you encounter in cooking. Parmesan is a type of cheese that was popularized in two-ish provinces of Italy. It’s not a recipe handed down from God on stone tablets. It’s a product of what people had available at the time and would be different had history been different. Worshiping one specific recipe codified in law that tries to say that literally the exact recipe but made in Montana can’t call itself Parmesan is dumb beyond all reason.
Authenticity is a poison on the cooking community and does nothing but make others out of people who should be sharing and experimenting and evolving cuisine taking the lessons from others.
I don’t really know how to respond to this except to say I never said the cheese was authentic and neither did the video. I said “as authentic as possible”. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Explain to me how this is "putting words in your mouth". To me, you're trying to focus on "authenticity". My point is that in this particular case, it's not just about the recipe, but specific ingredients that are really hard to replicate. That's why "authentic" shouldn't be the goal.
I don’t understand what you’re arguing. Here is a guy trying his best to make his cheese as similar to an authentic cheese as possible in taste, texture, etc. You’re saying that shouldn’t be the goal because he will have trouble getting the exact ingredients? So what? He knows he doesn’t have the exact ingredients and is trying his best anyway. All of the limitations are known to all involved. That’s a problem because?
Do people genuinely don't know that they are buying fakes and the product is far from the real one or people know very well it's not an original, but they buy it because of the price and despite not being original is still good? If it's only either of those cases, then I can't see how cheese and desist type of actions would help the original producers?
I mean if suddenly you cannot find clones on the market, then a person who used to buy clones would fork out more money for the real thing or bought something else within their budget?
The C&D seems baseless, considering the video goes out of its way to remark that it's not making "the real thing".
I could still see this working out well in terms of publicity for the Grana Padano brand -- seems unlikely there's any real risk of a Streisand effect here where everyone makes their own Grana Padano at home following the video's viral spread.
> This request is not baseless at all. If you have in the supermarket a noname cheese that is branded "Grana Padano style", it would hurt the trademark.
You don't sell cheese on YouTube, though. Why should private commercial interests be able to censure free speech around the globe?
Reminds me of a case here in Norway a few years ago back in 2016 where Synnøve Finden, one of the biggest dairy companies in the country, produced a new cheese and marketed it as a “Jarlsberg type cheese”. The dairy company that makes Jarlsberg did not look happily at this and was able to get a ruling that Synnøve Finden was not allowed to do this.
What the article I linked here does not mention however is that Synnøve Finden complied in a bit of a joking matter where for all of the cheese that had already been packaged with such labeling they printed out black stickers that said “CENSORED” over where the wording with Jarlsberg was. In doing so they managed to get an extra bit of publicity.
I only ever bought Kongsgård once and prefer the original Jarlsberg, but I know that some people liked Kongsgård.
Seems that in a blind test more people liked the original Jarlsberg better too.
It seems to me the youtuber is clearly exploiting the name Grana Padano to gain views.
As much as Trademarks can't be used freeily by other users so you can't use products of Denominazione di Origine Controllata (Controlled Origin Denomination).
Imagine the shitstorm if someone would make a video called "How to make Coca Cola style soda".
There are in fact a lot of “how to make Coca Cola” videos. They should fall under fair use (educational) and do not really infringe on the trademark (unless you’re selling it).
As long as the recipe isn't copyrighted, or obtained while under an NDA, I don't see the problem. The trademark is not being used to sell cheese. If we follow your style of reasoning strictly, it would also be forbidden to make videos or documentaries like "How Coca Cola became a success in the Soviet Union" or "Animals tortured in <cosmetics brand, e.g. Channel> test lab" (although for the latter case, there would obviously be a need to substantiate the claim).
But surely you can explain how they make it there? Or can you only explain how champagne is made when you are an seventh generation inhabitant of the Champagne region and the video is hosted at youtube.chmp.fr? I don't think PDO (if you meant Protected Designation of Origin) applies to information.
Putting the name of the cheese (style) he's making in the thumbnails is his usual format. I've watched a dozen or more of his cheese-making videos. I don't think his Grana Padano thumbnail differs in any significant way.
Well to start he didn't write "style" on the video screenshot preview, he just wrote Grana Padano.
Also he could have made a video generically called "How to make parmesan style cheese" but he decided instead to use the very specific protected product Grana Padano.
To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views.
I'm not a lawyer here either but this situation appears pretty common overall. Do a google search for 'KFC recipe' and there's no shortage of sites showing you how to make KFC style fried chicken, many using an alleged leaked list of ingredients. It just seems if it was illegal they wouldn't be able to do that but again IANAL and this is based on observational conjecture. Maybe it being a foreign company under different laws has something to do with it.
To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views.
But the whole point of a trademark is to reference the thing that is trademarked.
As long as it is clear that he's not affiliated with them then I think it is fair. If he said unofficial guide to make Grana Padano. Or my recipe that's better than Grana Padano then it would be fine.
On the flip side though, there is difference between the different Parmesan cheeses, so potentially he was trying to be accurate.
It really depends on whether people are going to YouTube and searching 'How to make Grana Padano' or just happening across the video and clicking in, and at that point how much difference the work Grana Padano has to Parmesan in terms of whether people would watch it. I don't know the answer to that.
I'm in favour of protecting origin terms, but it really should apply to the sale of items rather than home hobbies. Sure this guy is potentially making money adjacent to that by explaining HOW to do the hobby, but he's not making and selling Grana Padano (I haven't watched his channel before, so correct me if wrong).
It says his video shows his to make counterfeit Grana Padano cheese. But if I understand correctly, if someone from the correct region followed body instructions, the cheese they made would actually be a perfectly legitimate Grana Padano....
The licence being the fundamental part to protect the livelihoods of those who live in the region producing these valued products. But I guess we should outsource the production of this cheese to China instead, right?
There are land-owning European families whose wealth and power date back half a millennium. Most of these valued, recognizable products are mostly produced on land and capital owned by those families.
I think it's more the reverse. It's important to the wealthy Parisians that the traditional regional produce continue to be made. If the people in the village all gave up & got factory jobs, then hundreds of specific cheeses (etc.) would cease to be made at all, and not be available at any price for their table. So they have made sure this doesn't happen.
And? This sounds like the usual socialist argument of “tear it all down”—they’d rather all the money went to China than to wealthy locals which, let’s not forget, employ thousands.
Rereading my post, I can't find any sort of argument for either changing the system, keeping things as-is, or advocating for any sort of specific change.
Simply pattern-matching what people say to ideology is what leads to nothing getting done.
I'm not sure I have an opinion on what ought to be done. I do have an opinion that we should keep things fact-based. Licensing requirements protect entrenched interests. Is that a good thing? A bad thing? If there are problems, how should they be fixed?
Please try to discuss based on facts (or even your own opinions) rather than pattern-matching to an ideology you disagree with, and asking everyone to discount based on that.
All I did was point out a faulty argument. I didn't take a stance.
I am talking from my experience from living in the south of Spain. I know your argument, I know the kind of people who support it, and I know what it is and what it means.
You mentioned a common argument, I told you what I think of it.
Yes. That's what you did. It's called stereotyping or bigotry. I am not one of those "kind of people." I don't happen to live in the south of Spain, or even in Europe. In this case, your stereotyping happened to be off-base. I don't even drink wine or eat fancy cheese, so i have no dogs in this race.
My experience is that all "kind of people" are right about some things, wrong about others, and you're better off engaging critically issue-by-issue, rather than discounting an argument based on "the kind of people" who happen to make that particular type of argument.
You're also better off not imputing meaning. There's a pathway to sensible actions:
* Understanding facts (objective reality -- we should all be able to agree)
* Understanding viewpoints on problems (which comes down to values and opinions -- and we definitely won't all agree)
* Coming up with plans (which come down to figuring out how to meet the needs of as many people as possible).
If you short-circuit the top ones because you think it will lead the wrong course of action, you're promoting polarization and standing in the way of meaningful civic discourse. You're also willfully ignorant, since you learn the most engaging with people you disagree with, rather than discounting them (as we do in two halves of America) as liberal snowflakes or racist redneck hicks.
They can sell it, but the PDO ensures they have to find some other way of gaining market share than piggybacking off the reputation the products they imitate have earned over the years.
(Which, in fairness, equates to being unable to sell it if other people shop like I do - nine times out of ten I pick cheeses (to stay with the original example) I already know.)
I would be so happy to find Parmesan that‘s not named Parmesan, just for some more diversity. For example, I would prefer to avoid animal-based rennet if at all possible, but there is no real diversity in cheeses with a Parmesan-like flavor profile made with microbial rennet (I know of one such cheese and while it’s ok it’s also no amazing) and as far as I know Parmesan (actual Parmesan named Parmesan) with microbial rennet doesn’t exist.
There are probably hard-cheeses out there that have a Parmesan-like flavor profile and are made with microbial rennet but they are fiendishly difficult to find. The one I found I only did find because it markets itself explicitly as a Parmesan alternative with microbial rennet. But beyond that? And I can totally understand why cheese makers are reluctant to jump into that market if they can’t market themselves as that thing, even if they were perfectly capable of making that thing.
Overall it’s a difficult Problem to solve with no easy outs I can see.
This is how we have protected products here in Europe - hundreds of cheeses, salamis, balsamico di modena, well basically anything with any history.
It doesn't prevent copies, ie french/non local Swiss Gruyere, but its clear when you're buying it (AOP sign in the case of Gruyere).
I don't see a problem with it - you have variety of selection, competition is not stiffled, but if you want traditional original one, you can navigate the market without being an expert on every item.
As I understand it, EU Protected Designation of Origin rules are really broad and ban you from even describing a cheese as being in the style of Grana Padano or Parmesan, at least when selling it commercially. They're not just about protecting the consumer but a kind of protectionism. So ever since the protection was extended to the word Parmesan (for a while only Parmigiano-Reggiano was protected) supermarkets here in the UK have all kinds of weirdly generically-named cheeses that are basically cheaper imitations of Parmesan, but they can't describe them as such. There is no longer any generic name for this style of cheese in the English language they're allowed to use.
Can I splat "Made in America" and an American flag on my crappy Chineese imports? Can I sell "Idaho potatoes" which were grown in Ireland? Can I buy "Florida orange juice" made with Brazillian oranges?
One issue with a EU-US trade deal was that US farmers didn't want to have labelling rules to inform the consumer. Indeed they specifically wanted to remove the option that I, the consumer, had in deciding what to eat. The US government negotiating objectives call for ‘new and enforceable rules to eliminate unjustified trade restrictions or unjustified commercial requirements (including unjustified labeling) that affect new technologies.’
As swindling the consumer the is the M.O. of big business. I'd rather err on the side of the consumer. Naming protections - be it country or region of origin or trademarks in general - do not restrict consumer choice. I can buy "greek style" cheese if I want "feta style" that's not made in Greece.
The EU PDO scheme conflates geographic origin and a particular type of product in a way that is transparently protectionist and silly. When people say "feta cheese" or "american cheese", they're not asking for "made in Feta cheese" or "made in America cheese". They're asking for a particular flavor profile and cooking behavior, and possibly a specific method of manufacture. There is no particular reason why you can't make feta outside of Feta. There is nothing magical about the location in Greece that makes cheese produced in the same way outside of the town inherently inferior. Fuck terroir.
There is no particular reason why you can't make "florida orange juice" outside of florida
If I want to Buy American (tm), or Buy Greek, or whatever, that's my right as a consumer. I have no problem with your dodgy Chinese knockoff being sold, I do have a problem when it pretends to be the genuine article.
Feta is not a region in Greece. Feta is a type of cheese that has the whole of Greece as the terroir. It’s also made with sheep and goat milk and the cow-based cheese that resembles it (white cheese, salad cheese etc) just doesn’t compare taste wise.
With all that said, if you see (in the EU) something being called Feta, you immediately know what it’s made of and that it’s made in Greece.
God, I wish HN had an edit comment button right about now...
Regardless, my argument is not "you should be able to call cow's milk feta cheese", it's "labeling standards should not require a product to be made in a certain place". A strict labeling standard that said "feta has to be made from sheep or goat's milk" is perfectly defensible. One that says "it has to be made in a specific country" isn't.
I do agree with you though. As a Greek living abroad, I wouldn’t mind eating Feta that’s made in Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania etc (neighboring countries which share a lot of the culinary/pastoral tradition), as long as I knew that the ingredients and methods are the same. Which is hard to do without strict regulations though, especially outside the EU.
Fun fact: there must be thousands of regional variations of Feta Cheese in Greece. Major supermarkets will carry at least 5-6 brands, and in the cheese section you will get an extra 4-5 varieties. They are all called Feta + place name, and they differ in fat content, water content, acidity, saltiness, tanginess etc. Delicious and sad that most non-Greeks haven’t had a taste of good tasting Feta as the exported varieties are usually pretty meh.
It is about protecting the consumer, because it prevents a million "grana padano <tiny> alike cheese product </tiny>" type products, like you'd get in markets where these rules don't exist.
Nonsense. Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.
Proliferation of confusing low quality lookalikes is prevented by having an enforced criteria and associated labeling requirements. (If the text is too small as in your example then either the labeling requirements aren't sufficient or they aren't being enforced.)
and if the low quality is really as low quality as claimed, consumer would stop buying it. But if the "low" quality is actually great quality/good value for money, then consumers will buy it - regardless of the naming. Using law to prevent competition is worse for the consumer.
Please don't use "the consumer will stop buying it" type arguments, there are so many examples in real life where you can see trash will absolutely be bought (mostly by people that don't know the world could be not trash). It is a bad faith argument.
> bought (mostly by people that don't know the world could be not trash)
These laws prevent package labeling from informing would-be consumers of the (potentially better) products the imitate. People could know that they have alternatives by requiring imitations to be clearly marked as such. A product clearly labeled as "cheese-style Xheis" suggests that "xheis" is an imitation of "cheese".
People who don't realise its a knockoff. Both the consumer and the producer loses out. This isn't like copyright and patents, trademarks are there for protection of the consumer as much as the producer
> Nonsense. Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.
Such as brands, there's no real difference in intent between a protected origin and a company brand. And I never heard people complaining why they can't distribute their own Coca Cola either, even if it's up to the standards.
In fact the similarities are even stronger when you realise that some protected origins are very small in size and that you have bigger Coke factories than some protected origins.
> Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.
It doesn't really protect anything except the name. Parmesan is protected, my local supermarket sells it right next to cheese that is not called Parmesan. I have yet to be arrested for buying the cheaper one.
If it were merely about preventing deception, your example would be illegal just because of the deliberate de-emphasis on the word "alike". A cheese-buyer with poor eyesight could reasonably look at the packaging and think it was something it wasn't. A different ( more consistent?) typographical design on the same product could be reasonably expected to communicate that it is an imitation product, and what it is an imitation of.
It's about preventing deception, you are clearly wrong about the measures that would be taken because in fact the measures are different. Just because you don't agree with the form enforcement takes doesn't mean that it has to conform with why you think it would take the form that it does.
Lol, that's kind of true. They've been producing basically a _slightly_ inferior, cheaper knock-off version of Parmigiano-Reggiano for centuries and nobody ever complained; at least they always steered clear from associating themselves with the "Parmesan" brand because like many knock-offs they basically achieve what is arguably a less prestigious and blander product by having laxer quality standards.
For instance, Parmigiano-Reggiano can only be made by cows eating certain kinds of grass, which should be dried and not fermented. Farmers grow their own alfalfa, which is then turned into bales and stored away for the winter months; this is a taxing and expensive process, but avoiding fermented, cheeper feeds (like maize trimmings) makes the milk more shelf stable, with less unwanted bacteria, which then reflects into a cheese less prone to spoiling or tasting off.
The insistence of Grana Padano (which is mostly made on an industrial scale, compared with the smaller, cooperative dairies in the Parmigiano-Reggiano area) to allow farmers to use lower-quality feed stored in silos forces them to allow preservatives like Lysozyme in their formulation, because their milk gets inevitably contaminated by the Clostridium bacteria from the fermented feed they give to their cows.
Before anyone complains, I might be a bit biased towards Parmigiano-Reggiano because I was born and raised in the area it is produced, so I ate a lot of it in every form, shape and size, but I think every cheese connoisseur knows that there's definitely a taste and quality difference between the two; I like Grana Padano overall, but even when long aged it's definitely not as deep, flavourful and complex as an equivalent wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's simply not the same.
From what I can tell, they're probably one of the big beneficiaries of the EU removing the last generic term for this kind of cheese by extending protection to the word Parmesan - a lot of UK supermarkets and the like switched to pushing Grana Padano instead.
You talk at length about the 'cheese' part of the issue, but there is also the 'free speech' part. Do you think a brand of cheese can be so special as to justify censuring speech?
No, it's not, otherwise all those "homemade Nutella" recipes and such would all be illegal. It's not like this guy was going to sell the cheese as Grana Padano, so I really don't see the point the Consortium is trying to make, especially since the final product is just approximately similar to Grana Padano, and clearly not 100% exact. It's like as if Coca Cola went after all those cheap generic Colas only because they are clearly piggybacking on the big brand popularity of Coke to sell their product. I think that if someone buys cheap pre-grated knockoff Parmesan in a bottle, it's because they wouldn't have bought the real deal even if they had known it's better, and not because the knockoff exists. For instance, I know that certain brands of canned mackerel taste a bit better then the brands I usually buy, but I just don't care enough to spend extra cash on it. In the same way, I don't buy generic knockoff cheese because I care about it tasting worse then the real deal, and I consider it being worth the extra money.
I'm not sure Gucci would put down a hobby account for trying to make a similar bag. But if they did, I'd say their bags are not worth the price on our freedom of expression.
That's interesting. Wonder if it'd be feasible to come up with an equivalent of Yakult, but to give cows to nuke/kill-off unfriendly bacteria like Clostridium?
It already exists, it's called giving cows the right feed, and it has been done in Italy since the early middle ages. Quality requires effort, and the whole problem arises from Grana Padano producers being stingy and wanting to reuse byproducts of corn production instead of growing or buying the right types of grass.
The funny thing is that such bans really pointless in the cheese creation area at least. It is so insanely expensive and complicated to make quality cheese on scale that we might as well not bother. You need a specific cows which cost as much as a Mercedes, eating a specific food which may not be available or available too far with prohibitive transportation cost, living in a specific conditions (where a personnel entering looks more like entering an Umbrella corp facility), requiring a specific highly regulated facilities around (e.g. butchery), you need to have all production line sterile and clean, nothing can be reused even from another line, and all that's just the milk part. Then we need some extremely complicated facility to grow cheese and it may fail anyway because some parameter was off.
I'm not sure why this is controversial. Trademark owners must defend their trademarks to show that they're in active use, otherwise the trademark might be lost. You're not prevented from making a cheese that's in a similar style, you just can't refer to it in a way that's confusingly simillar to a trademarked name.
It's not a trademark, it's a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Similar but not the same and I'm not aware of an area being required to exercise their PDO to keep it.
Also, it was always my understanding that a PDO only/just forbids selling a good under a protected name/title, from another origin.
I never expected that to include/extend to the production process, let alone for personal use. I thought these regulations were all about commercial trade, to protect local producers against (supposedly unfair) outside competition. I don't really see how demonstrating a production process harms that.
In fact, considering the PDO protection local producers enjoy, it might just as well be argued that there is no need for any ban on the production of the same goods elsewhere, since those can already not be sold because of the PDO.
Did I just misunderstood the PDO doctrine, or is this just overreach (if not abuse) of it?
A case of wanted to have their cheese and it it too?
That is, assuming this recourse was (legally) valid in the first place. I'm not sure of that.
I have no more than a laymen's understanding of these rules, but I at least expect that they apply to commercial entities (businesses) and not private individuals. This is an important distinction, which these days is often ignored/overlooked by many. Probably not in the least become so many people actually run (freelance) businesses as individuals, more often than not bordering on illegality, if not actually (unenforced) illegally. Much of that depends on national/local laws though.
Maybe the plaintiff does see it as YouTube being a business, or the person making these videos doing this professionally (if there's any money being made from the videos, it sort of is), but neither of those two business are (professionally) producing the protected product in question (let alone commercially sell it).
If the PDO regulations actually allow/warrant this action, then I'd argue that this goes way beyond the original intent and mandate of this PDO doctrine. Sadly, it would not be a first for an idea being (politically) adopted and then substantially changed/extended before being implemented into actual law/regulation. But with the (at best questionable) culture of lobbying going around in Brussels, that can hardly come as a surprise.
Maybe the lawmakers who voted in favor of this doctrine should be asked if this is what they actually voted for. It might just annoy them, being "harassed" (if not insulted) with such "unimportant incidents", but that might be just what is needed here. If this is unforeseen/unintended (ab)use of these regulations, it is most likely to stop
when lawmakers get annoyed/pissed off and demand some kind of public statement, saying that this is not what is supposed to happen under this doctrine.
The EU has agreements with many other large markets to make sure they do not produce (or import, in many cases) products violating a PDO or GI protection. This is often bidirectional, with the EU recognising PDOs (by other names) of other countries.
The sticky thing here —and likely the reason they also have trademarks— is this isn't just an AOC-style geographical label like Champagne, Grana Padano isn't a place, it means "Big grainy [cheese] from Po Valley".
But I think this guy is rolling over far too fast. If the internet can crowdfund honeymoons and holidays for otherwise well-off people, they should be able to buy this guy enough representation to stand up and not encourage companies to attack people for just saying the names of their trademarks. He's not selling their product under their name, he's not encouraging others to sell their product under their name, it's just a few people making cheese.
Obviously, this is the result of the tyranny we get when we have a lawyer run IP protection program. They serve to protect, but the results of their activity is to bury all interest and knowledge of the IP they protect. I suspect that most of the Italian Grana Padano cheese makers are perfectly fine with the video this guy published, even glad for the interest he has in their product.
This existed for typefaces back to the hot metal days, because like PDO the names were legally protected but the styles were not; e.g. Palatino (Stempel/Linotype) = Book Antiqua (Monotype) = Palladio (URW) = Zapf Calligraphic (Bitstream) = TeX Gyre Pagella.
YouTube became popular because it was a central place where you can find videos and get good recommendations and such. The fact that it became "the place for video" has made it a battleground for this type of thing. It makes me wonder if the future of video hosting could be smaller sites where videos are less likely to be taken down, demonetized, etc.
I believe the law in this case is good. It's just how they are interpreting it. If some hobbyist makes a video "how to make Grana Padano style cheese", they send a cease and desist. Had they made a video "how Grana Padano cheese is made" and mentioned in the video that they are showing their version of the process but had specifically and clearly mentioned the resulting cheese is not and can not be actually called Grana Padano, they'd been okay I think.
They are probably okay now as well if the matter progressed to court and they had a good IP lawyer, but then again I am not one.
Semantics might be important here. Saying you are manufacturing "Grana Padano style" cheese might be the problem since it could be seen as diluting the original designation (essentially, a special trademark). There is either Grana Padano or non-Grana Padano cheese, nothing in between. Describing the process of making Grana Padano should be no problem at all, as long as you don't claim the resulting product is Grana Padano or anything like it. It wasn't manufactured by an authorized person in the authorized region so it can't be Grana Padano. I know it is a bit silly..
And I agree he was indeed probably enough careful in the original video. This could certainly be winnable for the tuber in court with services of a good IP lawyer.
There aren't any legal issues with this either. He's not selling the cheese, he's explaining how to make it. That's fair use, and the recipe for Grana Padano is public (defined in the law).
[edit: I just realized that the original video explicitly stated that this was a Grana Padano style cheese. The C&D tries to say he's teaching people how to make counterfeit cheese ?!??!?]
The cease and desist is over the name, or more specifically using the name of the cheese when you aren't making it in the correct part of the world.
This is a guy on YouTube describing how to make that cheese, the only thing he can say he's making is that cheese. This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now.
There is no way you could describe making that type of cheese without referring to it by name. The fact that they don't like people making identical cheese to them is inconsequential - it seems like this kind of usage should be trivially covered under fair use. That said he sounds Australian to me, and I have no idea how trademarks and fair use work in AU.
I am absolutely fine with origin naming legal defenses. You can’t sell something as though it was made somewhere when it wasn’t.
That is an entirely different issue than using naming rights to prevent people from making a similar agricultural product somewhere else, or sharing information about it using the name.
The rights should extend to product labeling and thats it, and they do. This C&D to a youtuber is comical.
Why does origin naming only apply to "fancy" products from France and Italy - cheddar originates in England, but no one claims that cheese made exactly the same way elsewhere isn't cheddar.
What makes “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” different from "West Country Farmhouse Grana Padano"?
By the logic that leads to WCFC, Grana Padano shouldn't be protected. Only "Piacenza Grana Padano" should be.
It is an identical situation: a method of making cheese, with an origin in a specific area. I can make cheese the same way, using the same ingredients for both cheeses, but one I can call cheddar, and the other I have to call "Not Grana Padano".
I have every reason to believe that countries protecting the name of their products has only helped local producers from becoming beaten out the market or losing their culture with virtually no cost to anyone outside of those markets, since you can still make the actual product with a different name.
> This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now.
This is not stupid at all. Apart from being an equivalent to a patent/license (if that justifies it in your point of view), the final outcome of traditional products can be affected very much by the local environment (breeds, feed, weather, water, even microbiota etc).
You simply cannot make traditional Mozzarella di bufala campana or Pouligny-Saint-Pierre in Wisconsin. You can make something similar, sure, but never the traditional.
Puttin aside the absurdity of a C&D for some random youtuber showing how to replicate a particular cheese, I don't agree with "This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid".
If I want Roquefort I want Roquefort, not another blue cheese. No problem selling another cheese and putting it next to Roquefort in the stalls (looking at you Saint Agur..), but words have meaning and places have meaning
But Roquefort cheese is the combination of specific bacteria and production conditions. If I have the same ingredients and the same production technique and conditions, then the only difference is that one was made in a specific location, and one was not. So what if mine tastes slightly different? No cheeses produced in the same region and in the same way taste exactly the same.
As for your "another blue cheese" comment - if someone makes a blue cheese using different bacteria, techniques or conditions then it isn't a roquefort so shouldn't be able to be labeled as such. But that difference is due to the place of origin - if I made a generic cows milk blue cheese in the south of france I could claim it's a roquefort just because of the origin.
They like to do that with alcohol as well, scotch, bourbon, tennessee whiskey, champagne, cognac etc. I guess it's to protect producers. In a way, it's a nice protection against globalization. A microprocessor can be produced anywhere, champagne cannot ;p
Champagne can be produced in numerous areas, only they can only say they're using the champagne method. In fact the first actual records of sparkling wine predate the various French Champagne producers (e.g. Dom Pérignon) in Italy and England, with some suggestion it was England first due to their stronger glass and tendency to add the necessary sugar to wine - for example there's no documentation of why Dom Pérignon spontaneously switch to bottling wine. The English were also the first to see the bubbles as an advantage.
The original French champagne was a flat wine, so maybe Champagne from the Champagne region of France should actually be flat and sparkling champagne (from England) be renamed?
>your video seems to describe how to create counterfeited replicas of Grana Padano.
I think that's a valid take. If someone made a
video "How to make your own Rolex style watch" that are from 3d printed parts and works and looks like a Rolex then I guess they would also get a same c&d letter.
Also I'm 100% behind protecting this restricted foods [0]. At least it's something against globalization (the guy is from Australia for example)
Except they’re not the same. A video that tells you how to make your own Rolex-style watch, aside from being a bad analogy, isn’t a video of how to make a counterfeit rolex. If you attempted to sell it and brand it a Rolex and represent it as a legitimate Rolex, then you’d have an issue.
I’m not inherently against geographically-restricted products (Though it definitely gets silly in spots) but he isn’t counterfeiting anything.
You can’t have a counterfeit without a false representation of what something is. The creator isn’t doing that. Nor is the creator somehow commercially exploiting their precious cheese.
Even still there's nothing about trademarks to prevent someone from building such a replica. Trademarks prevent selling such a replica to someone else, though.
Teaching how to produce something that is like (or even identical) to something else is not an act of deception.
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(I am not a lawyer, but have some familiarity with "IP" law. What follows is my understanding of United States laws on the matter.)
Making reproductions, or teaching how to, is not allowed under some circumstances (for example, if the thing being reproduced is protected by patents) but is allowed under others (for example, teaching how to duplicate a copyrighted work of art generally falls under fair use).
For your Rolex example, it depends on what Rolex is being duplicated, but your scenario could possibly be legal. Rolex watches can be protected by utility patents, design patents, and trademarks. Utility patents cover specific useful, novel, and non-obvious mechanical features of the watch. (ELI5 version: they protect the parts inside the watch.) Design patents cover similarly-specific ornamental features of the watch. (ELI5 version: they protect the look of the outside of the watch.) Both of these patents expire (after 20 and 15 years, respectively). After this period, all mechanical aspects of the watch, inside and out, become public property. The remaining protection on producing exact replicas of the watch are trademark protections. These specifically cover the "Rolex" and rolex "crown" marks on the watch. Trademarks protection can potentially last forever; Rolex seems unlikely to lose theirs any time soon.
Based on this understanding, it would be quite legal to publish instructions describing exactly how to reproduce Rolex watches that are greater than 20 years old, with the limitation that you should not mark your reproductions with Rolex's mark (the name or the crown). A perfect reproduction of a 50-year-old Rolex, marked with, say, a paper hat and the word "fohless", would not infringe on any of Rolex's rights.
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For what it's worth, I am not 100% behind Protected Geographical Status. The part I am behind is the protection of the identity of products with specific, intrinsically-local characteristics. The Wikipedia article opens with roquefort cheese as an example: it is made from specific things in a specific way in a specific place, and all three of those things make it what it is.
However, using the same-or-similar things in the same-or-similar way in a different place can produce products which are varyingly different or identical to the original. For products as old or common as cheese, there is nothing stopping somebody from doing this -- that's why can imitations exist. However, I think it is important to be able to express that something is an imitation, and outright backwards to prohibit it. If I like a cheese, how am I to learn of the more-accessible (and maybe preferable) imitations, or of the Protected legacy cheese it imitates? Imitating connects the prior art and the derivative in an intrinsic way, but these regulations prohibit this connection from its most visible location: the labeling on the objects themselves. The relationship may then only reside within the objects, which require means (money, and opportunities to purchase or order) and action (eating) to access, or in unrelated objects: lists, registries, the words and minds of the eaters. Practically, this makes it difficult to learn about cheese, because the actions necessary for doing the learning have been highly divorced from the actions necessary for eating.
Intellectually, western society seems to have agreed that we should know what we eat, and so required that foods be labeled with lists of their enumerated and nutritional content. I agree with this sentiment. Western culture was tremendously shaped by the Enlightenment, and it is in the spirit of the Enlightenment to know and understand what goes into your body. But there is more to foods than just what they are -- there is also why they are. Foods have legacies inside them, and that plays just as big of a role in shaping what goes into your body as does the availability of wheat, salt, and Red Dye #40. Limiting the proclamation or legacy is contrary to the rediscovery, free exchange, and new understanding of old knowledge, and therefore seems, to me, to be against a major spirit in our shared society.
I think they are trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming, as consumers associate the "something" with the knock off. I saw it a lot in recent years in the UK, even knowledgeable people end up buying "parmesan style" cheese and refer to it as parmesan, when the taste is not the same.
To protect the name in general, they might be going after every instance of the "style" usage, even if in this case it's clear there is no intention to trick, and probably no commercial incentive.