Balti plans cooled off; TRADEMARK: City's bid may be scuppered.

Byline: Tom Scotney

EURO lawmakers could be set to put plans to trademark the balti for Birmingham on the back burner, a city law firm has warned.

The European Court of Justice upheld the right of a Dutch brewery to call its beer 'Bavaria', even though Bavarian beer has geographical protection.

The Dutch brewers have been at the centre of an eight-year trademark dispute with Bayerischer Brauerbund, a German association of Bavarian brewers. The association's Bayerisches Bier ("Bavarian beer") has been granted geographical protection, but the ruling determined that these later rights could not be used to stop the Dutch brewers using the Bavaria name, which it has been doing since 1925 and with trademark protection since 1947.

Birmingham City Council has said it is interested in trademarking the balti - allegedly first created in Birmingham - to stop Indian restaurants outside the city selling the dish.

But Rebecca Tew, a partner at the Birmingham office of intellectual property Marks & Clerk, said: "The ECJ has made clear that these two brands must peacefully co-exist. Considerable time, effort and money are spent in build-inup a brand, which its owners were no doubt anxious to protect. However, the difficulty with geographical indicators and trademark rights is that the two can come into direct conflict.

"Geographical protection means that if a product is manufactured correctly in the given region, the producer has the right to use the name of that region to describe its products - even if the name enjoys trademark protection."

The ruling follows in the wake of a number of geographical indication disputes. Since 2001, the European Union has awarded protection to many regional food and drink products.