In a setback for India’s efforts to secure global protection for its basmati rice, the New Zealand High Court has dismissed an appeal filed by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) against the rejection of its application for a certification trade mark for Indian basmati. The ruling, delivered on October 30, has now been made public.
APEDA, the nodal agency responsible for implementing the Geographical Indication (GI) tag in India, had approached the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) in February 2019 seeking certification mark protection for basmati.
However, five years later, the Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks turned down the application, citing New Zealand’s Trade Marks Act, 2002, which prevents registration of the word ‘Basmati’ as a certification mark, The Hindustan Business Line reported.
Upholding the IPONZ decision, the New Zealand High Court noted that the Basmati Growing Area (BGA) spans both India and Pakistan. Granting certification exclusively to India, the court said, would unfairly restrict Pakistani basmati producers from selling their rice in the New Zealand market.
The court further referenced a December 2022 ruling by Australia’s Registrar of Trade Marks, which stated that the word “Basmati is incapable of distinguishing rice certified by Apeda from genuine basmati rice produced outside India," The Hindustan Business Line.
Apeda’s attempts to include two safeguard “refinements” in its application to protect Pakistan’s genuine producers were rejected by the High Court as insufficient to resolve the “core contradiction” within the application.
India faced another setback as Kenya’s Court of Appeal dismissed Apeda’s plea challenging a High Court ruling from April 2017. The case concerned Apeda’s opposition to the registration of trademarks containing the word “Basmati” by Kenya-based Krish Commodities, which applied in 2009, The Hindustan Business Line reported.
Kenya’s Registrar of Trademarks had rejected Apeda’s opposition in May 2013, a decision upheld by the High Court and now reaffirmed by the Court of Appeal.
The Kenyan bench said basmati rice does not hold formal registration or recognition in the country, leaving Apeda without legal grounds to claim exclusive rights. It also found no evidence that Krish Commodities’ marks were misleading under Kenyan law, The Hindustan Business Line reported.
The twin setbacks have raised questions within the international GI community. An expert in global GI regulations expressed concern that Apeda has not secured a single GI registration for Indian basmati overseas, despite the rice receiving GI tag status in India in 2016. The expert called for an independent review into the handling of these cases over the past nine years.
Chandrasekaran, author of“Basmati Rice: The Natural History of Geographical Indication,” said India’s approach must move beyond a “Euro-centric definition” of GI. He stressed the need to align GI claims with India’s civilisational context and with the global standards of “reputation and origin”, The Hindustan Business Line reported.
Both the New Zealand and Kenyan courts have dismissed Apeda’s efforts to secure international protection under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, signalling a challenging path ahead for India's attempts to safeguard basmati’s identity globally.