Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> IPKat

Intellectual Property Law

: IPKat

This little PGI went ... all the way to the European Commission

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

Left in the oven for too long, Cornish Pasties can become quite volatile

The IPKat does not normally disturb the peace of this zone of the blogosphere with news of the grant of protected legal status to geographical indications; he leaves that task to the MARQUES Class 46 weblog, which has broken the news of fresh GI Regulations at regular intervals over the past couple of years. However, he has just heard the news (which is a good deal fresher than the last Cornish Pasty he sampled) that the designation CORNISH PASTY has today received Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status by means of a Commission Regulation which has not yet been published online.  The Cornish Pasty Association (CPA), which has been campaigning for PGI status for the past nine years, is ecstatic.  According to Sky,

"The CPA says a Cornish pasty is characterised by its "distinctive 'D' shape" and by "being crimped on one side, never on top". 

The filling should be chunky with no less than 12.5% meat, potato, swede, onion and a light seasoning. 

As for the pastry, the casing must be "golden in colour, savoury, glazed with milk or egg and robust enough to retain its shape throughout the cooking and cooling process without splitting or cracking". 

Britain now has 43 protected products, with Cornish Clotted Cream, Melton Mowbray pork pies and Arbroath Smokies among the others".

This Kat has spent his entire adult life using the term "Cornish pasty" as a generic term and will not find it easy to adjust to life under the new regime.  What, he wonders, is the new generic term for a substance which in the past has been so termed but has now been excluded?

More on Cornish pasties here
Web definitions of Cornish pasty here and here
Cornish pasty recipes here, here, here, here and here
1984 Newspeak here

Full post as published by IPKat on February 22, 2011 (boomark / email).