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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

[edit: I just realized that the original video explicitly stated that this was a Grana Padano style cheese. The C&D tries to say he's teaching people how to make counterfeit cheese ?!??!?]

The cease and desist is over the name, or more specifically using the name of the cheese when you aren't making it in the correct part of the world.

This is a guy on YouTube describing how to make that cheese, the only thing he can say he's making is that cheese. This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now.

There is no way you could describe making that type of cheese without referring to it by name. The fact that they don't like people making identical cheese to them is inconsequential - it seems like this kind of usage should be trivially covered under fair use. That said he sounds Australian to me, and I have no idea how trademarks and fair use work in AU.

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I am absolutely fine with origin naming legal defenses. You can’t sell something as though it was made somewhere when it wasn’t.

That is an entirely different issue than using naming rights to prevent people from making a similar agricultural product somewhere else, or sharing information about it using the name.

The rights should extend to product labeling and thats it, and they do. This C&D to a youtuber is comical.

Why does origin naming only apply to "fancy" products from France and Italy - cheddar originates in England, but no one claims that cheese made exactly the same way elsewhere isn't cheddar.

Origin naming protections are all over the place.

In fact “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” is a protected name.

Another example is bourbon whiskey, it must be produced in the US out of 51% corn in a certain kind of barrel in order to carry the name.

What makes “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” different from "West Country Farmhouse Grana Padano"?

By the logic that leads to WCFC, Grana Padano shouldn't be protected. Only "Piacenza Grana Padano" should be.

It is an identical situation: a method of making cheese, with an origin in a specific area. I can make cheese the same way, using the same ingredients for both cheeses, but one I can call cheddar, and the other I have to call "Not Grana Padano".

I have every reason to believe that countries protecting the name of their products has only helped local producers from becoming beaten out the market or losing their culture with virtually no cost to anyone outside of those markets, since you can still make the actual product with a different name.

> This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now.

This is not stupid at all. Apart from being an equivalent to a patent/license (if that justifies it in your point of view), the final outcome of traditional products can be affected very much by the local environment (breeds, feed, weather, water, even microbiota etc).

You simply cannot make traditional Mozzarella di bufala campana or Pouligny-Saint-Pierre in Wisconsin. You can make something similar, sure, but never the traditional.

Puttin aside the absurdity of a C&D for some random youtuber showing how to replicate a particular cheese, I don't agree with "This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid".

If I want Roquefort I want Roquefort, not another blue cheese. No problem selling another cheese and putting it next to Roquefort in the stalls (looking at you Saint Agur..), but words have meaning and places have meaning

But Roquefort cheese is the combination of specific bacteria and production conditions. If I have the same ingredients and the same production technique and conditions, then the only difference is that one was made in a specific location, and one was not. So what if mine tastes slightly different? No cheeses produced in the same region and in the same way taste exactly the same.

As for your "another blue cheese" comment - if someone makes a blue cheese using different bacteria, techniques or conditions then it isn't a roquefort so shouldn't be able to be labeled as such. But that difference is due to the place of origin - if I made a generic cows milk blue cheese in the south of france I could claim it's a roquefort just because of the origin.

They like to do that with alcohol as well, scotch, bourbon, tennessee whiskey, champagne, cognac etc. I guess it's to protect producers. In a way, it's a nice protection against globalization. A microprocessor can be produced anywhere, champagne cannot ;p

Champagne can be produced in numerous areas, only they can only say they're using the champagne method. In fact the first actual records of sparkling wine predate the various French Champagne producers (e.g. Dom Pérignon) in Italy and England, with some suggestion it was England first due to their stronger glass and tendency to add the necessary sugar to wine - for example there's no documentation of why Dom Pérignon spontaneously switch to bottling wine. The English were also the first to see the bubbles as an advantage.

The original French champagne was a flat wine, so maybe Champagne from the Champagne region of France should actually be flat and sparkling champagne (from England) be renamed?

Nominative fair use applies to trademarks. You can refer to something by name without infringing

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