The government should formulate proper rules immediately to make the Geographical Indicative Products (registration and protection) Act functional, so that the law can establish the rights of products like Jamdani, speakers at a discussion said yesterday.
They also claimed that the existing act – which was passed in the parliament last year – lacked adequate provision to protect the rights of the country’s geographical indicative (GI) products.
The comments were made at a dialogue titled “Protecting Geographical Indication Products in the Context of Bangladesh and the Way Forward,” organised jointly by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and National Crafts Council of Bangladesh at the city’s Cirdap auditorium.
According to the existing act, GI is a sign which defines the source and contains the goodwill of a product that originated in a particular area, like Hilsa from Padma River, Chamcham from Tangail and Kanchagolla from Natore.
Registering a particular product like Jamdani with GI sign would benefit producers by giving them more financial and business opportunities due to its goodwill, said CPD Distinguished Fellow Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya.
“The country has already lost its famous products like Jamdani, Nakshi Kantha and Fazli mango because of not having the act in due time which could have identified and registered the GI products,” said Shukla Sarwat Siraj, a supreme court lawyer who works on Intellectual Property rights.
Regarding the GI products that India has already registered as their own, she said Bangladesh could also register those products because of their origin and market those with GI sign.
According to India’s Geographical Indications Registry, Nakshi Kantha was registered as a GI product of the country in 2008, and Fazli Mango and Jamdani Saree in 2009.
The registry mentions Jamdani Saree as “Uppada Jamdani Saree” – a handicraft item produced in its Andhra Pradesh state, Nakshi Kantha produced in West Bengal and Fazli mango grown in the Malda district of West Bengal state.
Referring to a report published in the Dhaka Tribune last November, Shukla said a comment by the then registrar of the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, which claimed that the government planned to register Jamdani saree as Dhakai Jamdani, was ridiculous.
Other speakers at the programme also echoed Shukla, demanding that Jamdani be registered under its original name, as the origin of the fabric was historically in Dhaka.
Shukla also claimed that only after registering products like Jamdani, Nakshi Kantha and Fazli mango as Bangladeshi GI products, the country could approach the World Trade Organisation for gaining the intellectual property rights of those products.
Earlier, Bangladesh formulated an ordinance named Geographical Indications of Goods (registration and protection) Ordinance 2008, which identified 66 products as the country’s GI products.
Of them, three were fisheries, eight vegetables, 14 agricultural products, 48 food items and 18 other products including Jamdani Saree, Fazli mango and Nakshi Kantha.
The government has formulated the GI act in line with the agreement made between Bangladesh and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on January 1, 1995.