ItalyUpdate

Parmigiano cheese, one of Italys most famous gastronomic products, has just won an important battle against German imitators. The Appeal Court of Berlin rejected the appeal presented by the German company Allgauland-Kasereien Gmbh against a sentence passed in April 2008 forbidding them to produce, advertise and sell cheese with the name Parmigiano, Bio-Permesan or Parmesan.

The Parmigiano-Reggiano consortium of Reggio Emilia, where the speciality cheese has been produced since the Middle Ages, expressed great satisfaction at the courts decision. The German company had claimed that the term Parmesan was a generic name and therefore could be used by other producers. The German court, however, did not accept this theory on the grounds that Parmigiano Reggiano, referred to generically as Parmesan, is a protected DOP product, which was legally recognized by the EU on the 26 February 2008