Appellation of origin: protecting a regional brand in Uzbekistan

A potters' cooperative in Rishtan has been throwing and glazing tableware for thirty years in a blue-and-turquoise ishkor glaze no one outside the Fergana Valley reproduces. In 2025 the artisans decided to move onto the marketplaces and hit an unpleasant surprise: a Tashkent trading company had already registered the words “Rishtan ceramics” as its own trademark in NICE class 21 — and was sending the Rishtan masters demand letters telling them to stop using the name of their own town. The situation sounds absurd, and it is fixable. A regional name, by its nature, cannot belong to one firm as a trademark; the law has a separate instrument built for exactly this — the appellation of origin. This article is about how it works, why it differs fundamentally from a trademark, and why it is the tool that saves the export brand of an entire region.

Why you can't lock up a regional name with a trademark

A trademark hands one proprietor a monopoly over a sign. That is precisely why geographical names are kept out of trademarks in their bare form: letting one company monopolise the word “Samarkand” or “Khorezm” would cut every other producer in that region off from it. An indication of the place of manufacture is an absolute ground for refusal — Article 10 of the Law “On Trademarks, Service Marks and Appellations of Origin of Goods”. An IP Center examiner has to reject such an application, and if the sign slips through examination anyway, the registration can be cancelled through the Appeal Board on the same descriptiveness ground — and on absolute grounds there is no deadline to file the challenge.

The practical lesson trips up half of all founders: if a geographical name sits at the heart of your brand, you protect it not “as a trademark” but with a different instrument. Trying to register “Bukhara suzani” or “Namangan apples” to a single sole trader will either fail or collapse at the first competent objection from a competitor. Weak protection here is worse than none: you pay the fee, you get the certificate, you build your marketing on it — and you lose everything when a neighbour in the same region cancels the mark and starts using your own name.

What an appellation of origin is, and how it differs from a trademark

An appellation of origin is a designation that contains or evokes the name of a geographical place and is applied to goods whose special qualities are determined by the natural and human factors characteristic of that place. The operative word is determined: the link between place and quality has to be real, not marketing. A Khorezm melon is sweet not because the crate says so, but because of a specific combination of soil, water, temperature swing and growing practice that cannot be transplanted to another province.

The single thing to grasp about an appellation of origin is that it is not one party's monopoly. There are three differences from a trademark, and each one changes the strategy:

• A right of use, not an exclusive right. Registering an appellation does not make the applicant the owner of the name. It enters the name itself into the register and issues individual producers a certificate granting the right to use it. There can be many such certificates — one for every legitimate producer in the region.
• An open circle of users. Any producer operating in the same geographical place and making goods with the same special qualities is entitled to obtain their own certificate and use the name on equal footing. You cannot bar the door to whoever filed first.
• It cannot be sold, assigned or licensed. The right to an appellation is inalienable. It cannot be assigned by contract the way a trademark can, and it cannot be licensed. It attaches to the goods and the place, not to a company.

So an appellation of origin is a tool not of a single firm but of a region, an industry, a cooperative. It protects not “my brand from my neighbours” but “our region's name from outsiders with no connection to the region”.

Appellation of origin vs geographical indication: two tools, two thresholds

International practice distinguishes two close instruments. An appellation of origin is the strict one: the special qualities of the goods must be essentially or exclusively due to the geographical environment, and effectively all stages of production must take place inside the region. A geographical indication (GI) is broader and easier to clear: it is enough that a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the goods is linked to the origin, and not every production step needs to happen locally. Anyone in Europe recognises the pattern from protected-origin schemes for Champagne, Parma ham or Rioja.

Uzbek legislation has traditionally worked with the appellation-of-origin institution — it is named outright in the title of the dedicated law. The geographical indication, as a separate and lighter-threshold tool, is developed in the WTO framework: Article 22 of the TRIPS Agreement sets the general protection of geographical indications, and Article 23 adds enhanced protection for wines and spirits. For the practical task the distinction sounds like this: where the link between goods and place is strong and provable at the level of “you simply cannot make this product anywhere else”, you are on appellation-of-origin ground; where the link is more reputational, discuss with a patent attorney which instrument currently delivers protection in Uzbekistan and which one you will need for export markets, where the GI regime operates in full.

How to register an appellation of origin in Uzbekistan

The procedure looks like a trademark on the surface — application to the Intellectual Property Center at the Ministry of Justice (IP Center), examination, register, certificate — but there is one decisive fork in the road.

1. Preparing the application. The application goes to the IP Center and, besides the designation itself and the applicant's details, contains a description of the goods' special qualities and a statement of the boundaries of the geographical place the production is tied to.
2. The competent authority's conclusion — the key document. This is what a trademark registration does not require. The applicant must attach a conclusion from the competent state authority confirming that the goods are produced within the boundaries of the stated region and that their special qualities are determined by conditions characteristic of that place. Without it, substantive examination fails: the examiner is not assessing whether the name is appealing, but whether the “place → qualities” link is proven.
3. Examination. The IP Center checks whether the designation truly is an appellation of origin, whether it has become generic (the way “cologne” or “cheddar” drift into everyday use), and whether it misleads.
4. Registration and the right-of-use certificate. On a positive decision the name enters the register and the applicant receives a certificate granting the right to use the name. The right of use is granted for a term of roughly ten years and can be renewed — and it can be renewed for as long as those special qualities and the link to the region survive.

State fees for filing, examination and issuing the certificate are charged under the IP Center's current schedule, which is revised roughly once a year; rely on the live fee table, not figures from old articles. The main cost item here is often not the fee but assembling the evidence and obtaining the competent authority's conclusion — especially where the goods' special qualities have to be backed by laboratory or agronomic studies.

Who may use a registered appellation, and how

Say “Rishtan ceramics” is on the register. What changes for an individual potter? He files his own application for the right to use the already-registered name, shows that he works in Rishtan and makes pieces with those very characteristics, and receives his certificate. From that point he lawfully marks his pottery with the regional name — and his neighbours in the trade do exactly the same, just as lawfully.

The Tashkent trading company from the opening, on the other hand — with no connection to Rishtan and no production of its own — will never obtain the right of use, because it is physically not in the region and makes nothing. More than that, its earlier trademark for the same words becomes vulnerable: once the appellation is registered, an identical or confusingly similar sign can no longer be registered as a trademark for similar goods in an outsider's name, and one granted earlier can be challenged.

From this flows a user's duty: you may mark with the name only goods that genuinely carry the stated qualities. If a producer leaves the region or changes the technology so the special qualities disappear, the right of use ends. An appellation of origin protects not a label but the goods' fidelity to their reputation — and that is its strength for the consumer and for the whole region.

Protection abroad: where appellations meet exports

The most expensive mistake with regional brands happens not at home but on export markets. The pattern is standard: an Uzbek product — dried fruit, silk, ceramics, honey — builds recognition abroad, after which a local importer or distributor registers the geographical name as an ordinary trademark in their own country, in their own name. From there they either levy a “toll” on the real producers or block shipments outright under the producers' own name. Unwinding such a registration is possible, but it costs years and tens of thousands of dollars in foreign counsel.

Protection is built on two levels. At home, the foundation is national registration of the appellation: without protection at home it is hard to assert rights abroad. Internationally, the protection of appellations of origin and geographical indications runs through the WIPO Lisbon system (the Lisbon Agreement and its Geneva Act), bilateral treaties and national filings in each market of sale. The specific route depends on which international mechanisms are open to Uzbekistan at the time of filing and on where you actually sell — the first question to put to a trademark and appellation specialist before you go to export, not after the name has been hijacked.

A customs layer works in parallel: recording the protected designation in the customs register of intellectual property helps stop the import and export of goods unlawfully marked with the regional name.

When an appellation is not your tool (and what to use instead)

The appellation of origin is a powerful but narrowly specialised tool. It does not fit if:

• You are the sole producer with a unique recipe. If the special quality of your product comes from your closed technology rather than the region, you need a trademark plus a trade-secret regime, not an appellation. An appellation would open the name to all your neighbours — which is the last thing you want.
• The link to the place is weak or invented. “Alpine yoghurt” made in Chirchiq is not an appellation; at worst it is consumer deception.
• You need to sell or franchise the name. The right to an appellation is inalienable; scaling through licences and franchises requires a trademark.

For a cooperative or cluster of regional producers the alternative or complement to an appellation is a collective mark, registered to the association and used by its members under a common charter. The choice between an appellation and a collective mark turns on how tightly the goods' qualities are bound to geography and how formalised the producers' association is.

In short

• A regional name cannot be locked up with a trademark — that is an absolute ground for refusal (descriptiveness, Article 10).
• An appellation of origin grants not a monopoly but a right of use; every legitimate producer in the region can hold one.
• The right to an appellation is inalienable: it cannot be sold, assigned or licensed.
• The key application document is the competent authority's conclusion on the “place → special qualities” link.
• For exports, protect at home first (the appellation), then file internationally and nationally in your markets of sale — before the name is hijacked.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an appellation of origin and a trademark, in plain terms? A trademark is one company's monopoly over its own sign. An appellation of origin is a whole region's right to its own name: every local producer whose goods carry the characteristic qualities may use it. A trademark protects a firm; an appellation protects a region.

Can I register an appellation to my company and shut competitors out of it? No. That runs against the very nature of the institution. Any other producer in the same region making goods with the same qualities is entitled to obtain their own right-of-use certificate. You cannot bar the door.

What is the competent authority's conclusion, and why is it needed? It is a document from the competent state authority confirming that the goods are produced within the region and that their special qualities are determined by local conditions. Without it, substantive examination of the appellation fails — this is exactly what separates an appellation application from a trademark application.

How long does an appellation of origin last? The name itself stays on the register for as long as the link between goods and place exists. An individual producer's right-of-use certificate is granted for a term of roughly ten years and is renewed for as long as the goods keep their stated special qualities.

A competitor has already registered our regional name as a trademark. What now? Registering the name as an appellation undermines the basis of that mark, and the mark itself can be challenged on absolute grounds before the Appeal Board — a descriptive geographical sign should never have received monopoly protection. On absolute grounds there is no deadline to object.

Does an appellation work for services rather than goods? No. The institution is tied to goods with special qualities determined by place. For services and for brands not bound to geography, the trademark is the right tool.

Do I need to register an appellation abroad separately? Yes. National registration in Uzbekistan does not protect the name automatically in other countries. Export markets call for separate mechanisms — the international Lisbon system, bilateral treaties or national filings in each country of sale.

A regional brand is an asset built by generations of makers, yet legally it is ownerless right up until someone takes hold of it with the right instrument. A trademark does not work here and even does harm: it turns a shared inheritance into someone else's monopoly. An appellation of origin does the opposite — it anchors the name to those who actually stand at the kiln or in the field, and it shuts out those who want to earn on the name with no connection to the region. If a place, and not just a firm, sits at the core of your product, this is where protection has to begin.