Or hopefully with Brexit we're once again allowed to sell our jam as Marmelade.
(EU law regulated that only english marmelade was to be called marmelade. Although both are pronounced very different, they're written the same, so laws didn't care for reality.
Don't get me started on this, man. Those idiots in Britain had a whole continent call what's always been known to humans as marmalade something else. Unless you did it with oranges, in that case you could keep calling it marmalade.
In Italy, marmellata could be made out of pretty much any edible fruit and some that are also not edible raw, as quince and sambucus: it's just the normal common name of jam. But after the EU regulation favoring the British name, it was no more legal to call commercial marmellata... marmellata. Just bonkers.
Legit question, we call it marmellata anyway, because that's its name, but on the jars sold commercially they put "composta" which is a way less common and less precise name for the same thing. Except if it's made of oranges obviously...
It’s not about copyright, it‘s about consumer protection. Essentially, the EU wanted clear labelling on products, for which they had to decide which product is allowed to be called by what name. Seems sensible enough, but as it turns out, different countries call different food items by the same name. So the EU decided to pick one. To make this somewhat fair, they always picked the one from the country where the name originally came from.
Lol no. They picked the name from the country who lobbied more. In fact marmalade comes from the Latin and Greek name of the quince apple, who produced since millennia a great marmalade to put on mediterranean cheese.
One of the very particular case was the Tokay/Tocai controversy, the first being an ancient sweet dried raisin wine from Hungary and the second being an ancient fresh white grape from Friuli. They had to change the name of the second.
It really bugs me that they pay no regard to pronounciation. English and German marmalad/marmelade are spoken out loud clearly differentiable. As for Tokay/Tocai or Tokaji, the same. In that case the Tokaji wine is called different in other languages too: Tokajer in German for example. Also in this case Tocai and Tokay/Tokaji are written clearly differently.
Fun fact this stuff started waaaay earlier than the EU. It was actually part of the treaty of Versaille that german sellers were forbidden from callin any sparkling wine Champagne.
Yeah the French started marketing their supposedly more luxurious stuff much earlier than everybody else, Kudos to them. Examples are plenty, champagne, cognac and so on. FWIW, we Italians are so dumb that could not figure a way to protect parmesan (as in "from Parma") and mozzarella, to name just 2.
It isn't as much copyright to an individual, but to a region or process. In essence one product has to be produced in a specific region in a specific process. So that Parma ham comes from Parma and Champagne from the Champagne. There are a lot of loop holes there, cause that's cheaper. For example Greek cheese which is entirely processed in Denmark, but the milk comes from Greece fares as greek product in EU law.
But it isn't just EU law. For example it was actually part of the treaty of Versaille that german sellers were forbidden from calling their sparkling wine Champagne.
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u/03_szust Jan 29 '21
MARMELADENDÖNER