Australia’s wine industry is being urged to give feedback on a consultation paper that has been released, which is looking at a proposal to develop a new Wine Export Label Directory.
The paper comes after the Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) has spent a number of months working with the Australian Government looking at options to strengthen the country’s wine export regulatory system to deal with potential intellectual property infringements.
Tony Battaglene, WFA Chief Executive said: “I welcome the proposal put forward by the Australian Government. The Australian wine sector has stringent export control measures in place to protect our brand overseas, and this is another string in our bow.
“This is a highly important additional step in strengthening our industries risk management and brand integrity. This is not only important for big brands, but provides an important part of our risk mitigation strategy for exports from all companies, no matter their size. All Australian wine brand should welcome this proposal.”
The consultation paper has been released by the Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, and the department has call for industry feedback on is proposal to develop the Wine Export Label Directory.
WFA said that the intention of the new directory is to enable brand owners to protect against the export of ‘copy-cat’ products by monitoring potential infringements to their intellectual property.
The development of a new national Wine Export Label Directory of publically searchable wine label Intellectual Property (IP) will enable brand owners to identify infringements of their IP and to take action to protect their rights. It will also allow for closer regulatory cooperation with the authorities in major export markets.
WFA said that it believes this is an important step to protection of the Australian Wine brand and that the directory has the potential to deliver increased integrity for export control systems. The proposal would build on Wine Australia’s increased regulatory powers which came into force in April 2018.
The proposal and information about providing feedback are available at: https://haveyoursay.agriculture.gov.au/wine-labels