Ah, okay, yeah. It's absolutely okay for you guys to care in the first place. I ain't gonna contest that. That is your business, not mine, and you don't need to give a reason for being the people you are. Sorry I didn't do well enough at making that plain.
I don't really buy the standardization thing, because it tends only to be an issue for operations big enough to worry about exports, and in that position they can reasonably be expected to assume the burden of adjusting their products to the expectations of target markets. I would absolutely be in favor, though, of universal standards that are designed to force sellers to actually adjust this way, more than to dictate the actual qualities of products themselves.
For instance, the actual system under debate works for me because the US can do stuff like choose its own definition of "champagne", but the burden is on them to specify their own exceptions from the general rule. And it stands to reason anything they don't specify, must not have been that important. So not only is there a concrete general rule that everybody can refer to, every participant can protect the things that matter to them in particular. And there's a well-defined system for handling all that stuff, so that nobody gets caught off-guard and everybody knows exactly where to look for the information they need instead of needing to pore over a bunch of different legal codes.
EDIT: @penguinofhonor
Early on, and I forgive you for missing it considering how lengthy this has been, I explicitly mentioned that I only am talking about situations where the word has become generic. I largely agree with your description of trademarks, and it's a good analogy when the geographical term actually conveys geographical information. I don't mind if Europe wants to limit the use of the word Kölsch, because as far as I'm aware there can't be a good argument that it's become a generic term for anything.
Of course, if Big Macs ever become synoymous with something like "any sandwich containing two meat patties and a third slice of bread", I'd say that McDonald's trademark shouldn't be enforceable, but perhaps they should be the only ones allowed to use the trademark symbol with the term or something. I know trademark law doesn't work that way, but that's how I would like it to work. The point I'm trying to make is that "hamburger" shouldn't mean "sandwich from Hamburg" and should instead be allowed to refer to a general category that is so broad it wouldn't qualify for trademark if the application were filed today.
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Topic: TPP and TTIP (Read 37855 times)