[jkldotio]

So you've conflated regional with generic, a distinction I pointed out first, without any worked reasoning at all.

People generally lose their trademarks quickly if they don't enforce them and allow them to go into the language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_generici...

I honestly don't see you as providing a real argument from first principles.

[alkonaut]

I used Champagne as an example, but the same applies to Parmesan, Feta and Västerbotten which are reginal by tradition in one case and by name in two.

What’s important to me as a consumer is I want to support the producers of the original region, not much else.

[unishark]

But the poster you challenged was specifically complaining about a generic product name that was not a place name. Because it opens Pandora's box in terms of every generic food name being reclaimed by the place it originated.

The list of place names which are also products, and the rhetorical ease of defending their protection for such cases, does not make the argument about protecting local generic names as well, precisely because it is not as easy to defend such names. What criterion would you use? The degree of feel-good small-town credentials of the claimant?

[alkonaut]

I agree there may be a subtle difference between “actually geographic” and “traditionally regional but generic” but I don’t think it’s actually important. That Pandora’s box seems well worth opening.

If a product was made exclusively in a region for some amount of time (say a few hundred years, and nowhere else) then I think that’s a pretty strong case for protecting that tradition in the region whether the produce bears that name or not.

[unishark]

Seems like that would still include all foods that have been around a long time in old countries. Such as sushi for Japan.

[alkonaut]

Possibly, but “dishes” and “exportable products” seem a bit different from an industrial perspective. I don’t think dishes will ever be up for discussion in this context.

[dantheman]

Why not just put where it is manufactured? then you can support the place? don't they already do that?