Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/172581
PACKAGING wine, though historically the place's name (Penglai) bears no resemblance to the phrase. Gerien's legal team challenged the registration but was unsuccessful. The need for protection prompted the Napa Valley Vintners to have Gerien register the Napa Valley appellation as a geographical indicator with the AQSIQ, the Chinese agency charged with accreditation, import inspection and food safety. 'Defensively register your mark' For individual wineries looking to protect their names, Gerien says companies don't have to be exporting wine to China in order to register for a trademark there. "You can defensively register your mark," he says. Gerien encourages clients looking to enter the Chinese market in the next three years to apply for protection now, before trademark poachers register their brands first. "Who ever gets to the trademark office first will get to protect the rights," Gerien says."If you're selling wine in the Chinese market, and you don't have a trademark registered there, you're not protected." In fact, if someone registers your brand before you do, that person can sue you for selling your own wine. This process is employed by Chinese wine distributors to hold U.S. wineries captive; by owning the trademark for a wine brand, distributors are able to ensure that all of the brand's distribution in China happens through them or not at all. Wineries that already hold a registered trademark in the United States are eligible to apply for international trademark registration through the Madrid Protocol (China is among the member countries). The caveats, Gerien says, are that the cost makes it worthwhile only for wineries looking for brand protection in three or more member countries, and the Chinese Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau are not included. Outsmarting the counterfeiters According to Marietta Bartoletti, senior economic/commercial officer for the U.S. Department of State, 75% of counterfeits come from China. "I do believe the Chinese government wants to get away from being known as the counterfeit capital," Bertoletti says. "If you know that a certain wine is not available there, and you see it, you could report it right away." For David Pearson, CEO of Opus One Winery and one of the speakers at WACS, the fight against counterfeiters has been not so much against exact duplicates but "near misses." A restaurant and wine bar in Thailand called Shala One offers a house wine with a label undeniably similar to the one used by Opus One, which has been using the label design since the 1980s. Both feature blue profiles printed on white paper and feature signatures underneath, although comically, the profile that adorns Shala One's label appears more like Alfred E. Neuman from Mad magazine than it does Robert Mondavi or Baron Philippe de Rothschild. The problem with such cases, Pearson says, is that inaccuracies on copycat labels make a trademark infringement claim difficult to litigate. "We can't trademark a silhouette, we can't trademark a squiggly line, and we can't trademark a signature," says Pearson, who adds that when such imitations arise he consults a trademark attorney and weighs the possibility of winning vs. the money that would be spent bringing the case to court. Often, he says, a strongly worded letter encouraging a label makeover proves sufficient. Of course sending such a letter requires tracking down the party responsible for producing the wine, and according to Pearson copycats make the ownership structure intentionally difficult to navigate. Using technology Napa Valley's Opus One has identified international counterfeiting and replication attempts such as this comical likeness Shala One from Thailand. For brands with costly wines like Opus One, ensuring that bottles end up in consumers' hands unadulterated is worth an investment. The winery uses anti-counterfeiting technology as both a visible way to communicate the bottle's authenticity to consumers (the back label contains a chip as well as a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone) as well as a vehicle to track bottles after they leave the winery. Every time a bottle is scanned, the location is relayed to a server at Opus One. In addition to QR codes, Opus One embeds technology in its back label and uses custom light-sensitive ink on its capsules. "We can track a bottle from winery to destination as long as it's being scanned. We know it passed through distributors, négoçiants," Pearson says. If the final owner scans the bottle with an Internet-enabled device, Opus One winemaker Michael Silacci appears on video discussing the vintage of the newly purchased wine. "We get to connect instantly with the consumer, to a person who wants to talk to us," Pearson says. Playing it close to the chest Opus One employs other anti-counterfeiting protection technologies, but Maureen Downey, founder of private wine collection management firm Chai Consulting, emphasizes the value in keeping such details secret. "When you disseminate information about what you are doing," she says, "you're just giving (counterfeiters) a road map." Having spent a career uncovering counterfeit bottles from high-end wine collections and verifying the provenance of legitimate wines, Downey says, "Anything you can do to make sure that capsules don't get re-used is great." Many French wine exporters have been campaigning for restaurants to break the bottles after use so they cannot be refilled. Downey also advocated the use of layered technologies that combine low-tech solutions such as unique glass and keeping track of wine lots with high-tech tools. According to Erik Harvey, project manager at Napa-based iProof, "You have to think about the cost (of anti-counterfeiting technology) and the reduction of actual risk that you have." Most of the exhibitors in attendance agreed that solutions can range from 2 cents to 30 cents per bottle, plus additional expense for the software and data storage. And simply packaging with anti-counterfeit technology isn't enough, Downey says. Ask customers and members of the distribution channel to be part of the solution. According to Philippe Mathevon of Advanced Track & Trace, "You really need to encourage the consumer to scan the code." Win es & Vin es O C TO b er 20 13 45