Legal protection when indigenous knowledge crosses borders is limited
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VIJAYKUMAR PATIL
The Bombay High Court’s verdict in the Kolhapuri chappal versus Prada controversy set the tone for a debate that stretched far beyond the courtroom. The court refused to restrain Prada from selling its luxury sandals abroad despite their uncanny resemblance to India’s traditional Kolhapuri chappals. At the heart of the judgment lay two jurisprudential concerns, the territoriality of law and the locus standi of the petitioner.
The court stressed that geographical indication (GI) rights are territorial, their enforcement stops at the Indian border. Unless Prada sold footwear within India under the Kolhapuri name, no misrepresentation or deception was legally established. On locus standi, the court underlined that only the registered artisan associations and authorised users under the Geographical Indications of Goods Act, 1999, could file such a plea, not third parties acting in abstract public interest.
This reasoning may sound technical, yet it raises profound questions of justice. Kolhapuri artisans, whose collective labour and skill give the footwear its reputation, see their craft imitated by a global luxury house selling sandals for more than ₹1 lakh. Their own earnings rarely cross a fraction of that amount. The court did not deny the moral injustice, but jurisprudence, it reminded, requires legal standing, evidence of deception, and territorial applicability. The law itself is robust within India. The GI Act provides both civil and criminal remedies against misuse. A violator may face injunctions, damages, and even imprisonment if found falsifying a GI. Prosecution can be initiated in civil and criminal courts, remedies range from injunctions and delivery up of infringing goods to imprisonment between six months and three years, coupled with fines up to ₹2 lakh. The law gives teeth to artisan communities, but only within India’s territorial jurisdiction.
Foreign ‘threat’
But what happens when the violation occurs abroad. This is where jurisprudence meets its hardest limit. Take the example of Odisha Rasgolla, another GI protected sweet. If someone in New York falsely labels ordinary rasgullas as Odisha Rasgolla, the Odisha association cannot directly rely on the Indian GI Act. Enforcement outside India requires resort to international agreements like the WTO’s TRIPS, which obligates members to protect GIs, yet leaves the form of protection to each country’s legal system.
In the US, there is no standalone GI law. Instead, GIs are protected as certification marks or collective marks under trademark law. Darjeeling Tea, for instance, has secured a certification mark in the US. Odisha Rasgolla too would need to register with the USPTO before attempting enforcement. Without such registration, the association could only bring claims under the Lanham Act for false advertising or passing off, a far weaker position. This exposes a jurisprudential grey area. Indian law provides strong remedies at home but relies on foreign legal systems abroad. International enforcement of GI is patchy, dependent on local registration and litigation in expensive foreign courts. For small artisan collectives, the process is often unaffordable. Luxury houses, with global legal teams, exploit this asymmetry with ease.
The Kolhapuri chappal controversy thus is not merely about Prada and sandals. It is about the limits of legal protection when indigenous knowledge crosses borders and collides with global commerce. Jurisprudence speaks of territoriality and locus standi, yet artisans live in a world without such neat boundaries. Their creations travel far beyond Kolhapur or Odisha, carried by culture, migration, and memory. When Prada sells a sandal echoing Kolhapuri lines, or when a New York sweet shop labels its syrupy rounds Odisha Rasgolla, the law hesitates. It hesitates between respecting territorial sovereignty and answering a deeper moral claim that culture should not be exploited without credit or benefit.
Until there is a truly harmonised global framework for GIs, this space will remain a grey area, a liminal zone where jurisprudence falters and culture is left vulnerable to appropriation masked as inspiration.
Datt is a student, and Nandy is Professor, School of Law, NMIMS University
Published on September 6, 2025