With their historic links to a specific region, GIs are increasingly valued for their endogenous development potential. But precisely what does legal recognition as a GI guarantee? Drawing on the EU's registration system as a model, this paper investigates the certification of provenance and authenticity by public authorities. Recent empirical findings reveal that considerable flexibility exists within the certification process, which permits the loosening of linkages to a region and dilutes the certification guarantee. The present over-reliance on the system's ability to certify could be usefully remedied if greater attention is paid to the individual product specification design.

There is considerable variation in the nature, scope and institutional forms of legal protection for valuable geographical brands such as Champagne, Colombian coffee and Darjeeling tea. While regional products are increasingly important for producers, consumers and policy makers, the international legal regime under the TRIPS Agreement remains unclear. Adopting a historical approach, Dev Gangjee explores the rules regulating these valuable geographical designations within international intellectual property law. He traces the emergence of geographical indications as a distinct category while investigating the key distinguishing feature of the link between regional products and their places of origin. The research addresses long-standing puzzles, such as the multiplicity of regimes operating in this area; the recognition of the link between product and place and its current articulation in the TRIPS definition; the varying scope of protection; and the extent to which geographical indications ought to be treated as a category distinct from trade marks.

Wine as the Epistemological Model Despite claims to universalism and open-endedness, intellectual property regimes have tended to develop around specific archetypes of subject matter. If literary and artistic works provided the basic template for much of copyright's structure and doctrine, wine has formed the subject matter kernel for sui generis geographical indication (GI) regimes in the EU. In turn, the EU's regimes have proved influential around the world, exporting the intoxication with this particular subject matter. A question which remains (strategically) neglected is this: to what extent can a regime designed around the particularities of wine be adapted to accommodate cheese, charcuterie, coffee as well as crafts and textiles? With exquisite irony, GI law lacks a reliable map when it comes to appropriate subject matter. The prototype of wine has undeniably shaped the norms, form and substance of sui generis GI systems. In epistemological terms, it has been ''in vino veritas'' for some time. This category of subject matter has been distilled and decanted into the distinctive link between product and place, which sets GIs apart as a separate category of IP. According to the TRIPS Agreement, a GI is a sign which indicates that a good originates ''in the territory of a [WTO] Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin'' (Art 22.1). This ''essentially attributable'' link was initially conceived in the context of legislative and administrative experiments relating to French wine regulation across the 19th and 20th century, informed by notions of terroir. While the precise connotations of terroir have fluctuated over time, it functions as a cipher for the influence of D. S. Gangjee (&)

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