The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is to develop a new directory to protect the intellectual property of Australian’s wine industry.
The Australian Wine Label Intellectual Property Directory is aimed at bringing greater transparency to exported labels, preventing dodgy copies.
Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, David Littleproud said copycat export wines mimicked Australian brands by copying their labels.
“This rips off our producers and it also ruins the reputation of our wine when customers expect a quality Australian wine and receive a cheap knock-off,” Mr Littleproud said.
“The publicly accessible directory will require all Australian wine exporters to submit images of their labels prior to gaining export certification,” he said.
“It will be searchable by image elements, brand name and publication date and will display the trademarked image of labels, the exporter’s ABN, brand name and date the label was published to the directory.”
He said this would allow wine growers and exporters to identify copycat labels so that copycats could be stripped of their export licence and those being copied could also take private legal action.
“There are significant punishments for those who breach the law and the directory will help ensure copycats are held accountable,” the Minister said.
The initiative is part of the Government’s Export and Regional Wine Support Package.
The announcement was made before the Government went into caretaker mode.
