Context: Recently, at its Spring/Summer 2026 menswear show in Milan, Italian luxury brand Prada unveiled footwear inspired by India’s Geographical Indication (GI) tagged Kolhapuri chappals, sparking accusations of ‘cultural misappropriation’.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key facts about the Geographical Indications (GI) tag.
What is a GI tag?
- Geographical Indications of goods refer to the place of origin of a product.
- GI tags are a form of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that identifies goods as originating from a specific country, region or locality, where their distinctive qualities, characteristics, or reputation are essentially linked to that ‘place of origin’.
- Awarded by: Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
- In India, there are currently 658 registered GI-tagged goods, including Chanderi sarees (Madhya Pradesh), Madhubani painting (Bihar), Pashmina shawls (J&K), Kancheepuram silk (Tamil Nadu), and Darjeeling tea (West Bengal).
Key features of GI registration:
- Unlike trademarks, which are owned by enterprises, GIs are public property belonging to the producers of the concerned goods and cannot be assigned, transmitted or licensed.
- GI registration is given to an area, not a trader. Once a product gets the registration, traders dealing in the product can apply to sell it with the GI logo.
- Any trader’s body, association, or organisation can apply for a GI tag. The applicants need to prove the uniqueness of the item with historical records and a complete breakdown of how the product is made. Authorised traders are each assigned a unique GI number.
- Raw materials for such products do not have to come from that region (unless it is an agricultural tag). E.g.,
- Leaf in Banarasi paan is not grown in Varanasi; it comes from Bihar, West Bengal, or Odisha.
- Mulberry silk used in Kancheepuram sarees comes from Karnataka and the gold zari from Surat.
Significance of GI tag:
- GIs serve as a powerful marketing tool, driving rural development, boosting exports, enhancing consumer confidence, and preserving ‘cultural knowledge’ of local communities, farmers and indigenous groups.
Can an unauthorised trader sell the GI product?
- Legal protection of GIs stem from international instruments like:
- Under the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883) GIs are covered as an element of IPRs.
- Clearer definition under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, 1995.
- India, as a TRIPS signatory, enacted the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force in 2003. The Act provides for GI registration, enforcement of rights, prohibition of unauthorised use and penalties for infringement.
- If any unauthorised trader tries selling the product under that name, they can be prosecuted under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. However, GI rights are primarily ‘territorial’ and consequently limited to the country (or region) where protection is granted. At present, no automatic ‘world’ or ‘international’ GI right exists.
Indian traditional products have time and again suffered exploitation by global corporations. To prevent such cases in the future, one could start by expanding the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library to include wider traditional grassroots expressions.
Making a ‘searchable database’ would allow brands to conduct due diligence and searches to identify right holder communities for collaboration.