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Geographical Indications: A Major Challenge for MERCOSUR


 This article focuses on the intellectual property chapter of the EU-MERCOSUR Free Trade Agreement. It is not intended to provide an exhaustive analysis of all the intellectual property rights involved but to go deeply into a specific matter, geographical indications, which is undoubtedly a controversial concession in the chapter.
 The entire free trade agreement negotiations took more than 20 years and ended in June 2019 with an ‘Agreement in principle’. From the very beginning it involved a red line for the MERCOSUR countries, namely the intellectual property chapter.
 This article will show the complexity of including the private rights of prior users (generic names, plant varieties and trademarks) as a trade-off for agricultural market access in negotiations mainly focused on tariff reduction and trade rules.
 In addition, the imbalance between the parties was deepened by the lack of regionally harmonized intellectual property standards within MERCOSUR.
 In this regard, the main objective of this article is to identify the legal challenges derived from the overlap of national, regional and bi-regional rules that the Mercosur countries will face when implementing the geographical indication commitments, given the bloc’s legal and institutional structure. Unlike tariff reduction, the commitments derived from the negotiation of private rights are a crucial issue. Against this background, some proposals are outlined to address how to determine a medium- and long-term strategy based on the needs of local producers to add value to their productions.