The European Communities Trade Mark Association (ECTA) is a non-governmental professional association actively involved in promoting changes in the fields of Intellectual Property in Europe. Within this framework, the ECTA Award encourages academic research for the development of European trade mark, design, copyright, and geographical indication laws.

The working paper titled ‘Innovating within Tradition: Are PDOs and PGIs Loosening Their Link to Origin?’ aims to analyze culture and tradition as a rationale to ground the enhanced GI protection. On top of that, the analysis of GI amendments attempts to better understand the evolution of the link to origin and the difference between Protected Denominations of Origin (PDOs) and Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs).