Science and Technology › IPR and science policy
Intellectual property and Geographical Indications
Intellectual property: patents and the law on what may be patented, copyright, trademarks and designs, Geographical Indications, traditional knowledge, plant varieties and the trade rules that govern them. Prelims has asked which products hold Geographical Indication tags and why India enacted the Geographical Indications Act.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2019: the Intellectual Property Appellate Board and plant variety protection
11 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Geographical Indications
A Geographical Indication (GI) is registered to a region rather than to a firm, so a producers' body or a market committee holds it rather than any one grower. That makes the tag collective property, and whoever is written into the register decides who may lawfully sell under it.
- An application may be opposed within three months of its advertisement under the Act.
- India has 724 registered GIs, and only 42 per cent of them have any authorised user at all.
- The Intellectual Property Appellate Board was abolished in 2021, so GI disputes now go to slow civil courts.
- About 40 million kg of counterfeit Darjeeling tea is sold worldwide, roughly ten times actual production.
- Only 10 to 15 per cent of the price premium a GI earns reaches farmers.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2018: why India enacted the Geographical Indications Act, 1999
- Prelims 2015: which products hold Geographical Indication status
11 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Unjha jeera and saunf
In early 2026 the GI tags for Unjha jeera (cumin) and saunf (fennel) went to a market committee in Gujarat. Cumin growers in Rajasthan say they never had the chance to object, and that case is what an August column used to argue the regime protects the place but not the producer.
- Rajasthan's cumin farmers say language and access barriers kept them from objecting in time.
- The column proposes state enforcement cells and online monitoring to catch goods sold falsely under a tag.
- It also proposes producer collectives, and benefit-sharing on the European Union model.
Also filed elsewhere
- Copyright in a machine generated work · on AI governance, safety and ethics
A copyright needs an author, and an author in Indian law is a person.