Geographical Indication (GI) options for Ethiopian Coffee and Ghanaian Cocoa

A Consideration of Communal Trademarks
The local and regional West African market for textiles is also threatened by the
proliferation and influx of cheap, low-quality imitations by foreign manufacturers,
chiefly Chinese, of the designs of the local industries (see Abdullah, 2010).
At the same time, there is increasing evidence internationally that entrepreneurs
from both developed and developing countries can find ways to overcome
limitations of scale and survive the onslaught of globalisation and trade liberalisation.
Among the methods being used by small-scale entrepreneurs to secure
global market bases for their products is the use of the intellectual property (IP)
tool of establishing legally enforceable communal trademarks: certification marks,
collective marks and geographical indications (GIs) (UNESCAP, 2009). In India,
for example, communal trademarks are instrumental in the branding of products
of the small-scale producers of Darjeeling tea made in West Bengal, pashmina
textiles made in Kashmir, and leather products, toys and wall decorations made in
Andhra Pradesh (see UNIDO, 2010).
An example of communal use of trademarks in Africa is the Ethiopian initiative
(see Chapter 4 of this volume) that saw the registration of three brands of
Ethiopia’s fine coffee produced by local farmers (Yirgacheffe, Sidama and Harrar).
The utility of communal trademarks hinges on the fact that they provide a platform
to achieve market growth and competitiveness through “partnership collaboration
between the producers concerned, joint standardisation of product
quality, monitoring of compliance with agreed production procedures and collective
marketing” (UNIDO, 2010, p. 2).
The research study outlined in this chapter investigated the potential feasibility
of communal trademark strategies in the leather and textile sectors of Nigeria.
The study sought to investigate the potential of communal trademarks as strategic
vehicles for branding and market access. The assumption underlying the study
was that such collective strategies carry the potential to offer – in ways that might
not be feasible through the use of individual trademarks – qualitative and quantitative
synergies (based to some extent on collaboration and openness dynamics)
that can help small entities distinguish their products and build a positive
reputation in competitive environments. Section 2 of this chapter delineates the
relevant concepts and the contours of the two sectors studied. Section 3 outlines
the research, Section 4 provides the findings and Section 5 offers conclusions.
2. Definition of concepts, profiling of the sectors
Communal trademarks
Communal trademarks differ from the classical trademark paradigm. Classical
trademarks conceive of the marks as owned and used by an individual entity to
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