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 The United States, like many countries, faces healthcare challenges, including with respect to aging populations and rising health care costs. The United States shares the objectives of continuing improvement in the health and quality of life of its citizens, and of delivering efficient, responsive, and cost-effective, high-quality health care to its population. The United States looks forward to engaging with its trading partners on the concerns noted above.

Geographical Indications

The United States is working intensively through bilateral and multilateral channels to advance U.S. market access interests and to ensure that the trade initiatives of other countries and regions, including with respect to geographical indication (GI) protection, do not undercut U.S. industries' market access. GIs typically include place names (or words associated with a place) and they identify products or services as having a particular quality, reputation, or other characteristic essentially attributable to the geographic origin of the product or service.

The United States is actively involved in promoting and protecting access to foreign markets for U.S. exporters whose products are identified by common names or generic terms, like parmesan and mozzarella for cheese. The United States is pursuing these objectives in international fora, including in APEC, WIPO, and the WTO as well as in bilateral agreements. The United States is also engaging bilaterally to address GI-related concerns, including with Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the EU and its Member States, Jordan, Morocco, the Philippines, South Africa, and Vietnam, among others. U.S. goals in this regard include:

 Ensuring that the grants of GI protection does not violate prior rights (for example, in cases in which a U.S. company has a trademark that includes a place name);

Ensuring that the grant of GI protection does not deprive interested parties of the ability to use generic or common terms, such as parmesan or mozzarella;

Ensuring that interested persons have notice of, and opportunity to oppose or to seek cancellation of, any GI protection that is sought or granted;

Ensuring that notices issued when granting a GI consisting of compound terms identify its generic components; and

Opposing efforts to extend the protection given to GIs for wines and spirits to other products. 

The United States is particularly concerned with the EU system of GI protection, both within the EU and as extended through its trade agreements. These concerns include the scope of protection provided to GIs, including in relation to trademarks and generic or common names, as 26