CIPIL Intellectual Property Seminar: ''All he had was a name’. The limits of the law in the 19th century champagne trade'

Speaker: Graham Harding (M.Phil student, Faculty of History)

Location: B16

Abstract: In the 19th century the idea of making wine in Britain was ‘nonsensical’. Hence the trade in the UK was dependent on wines from Europe and South Africa. Unfortunately for consumers the wine trade was also known for ‘chicanery and fraud’.

Champagne was subject to adulteration, misrepresentation and passing-off - at almost every level of the value chain. Counterfeit or adulterated wines were adorned with forged labels and stoppered with corks either recycled by enterprising waiters or simply stamped out with a branding iron. Every champagne house of repute was plagued by ‘namealikes seeking to cash in on the value of a known brand. Trademarks, in Britain at least, were inadequately protected by the Merchandise Marks Act of 1852 The word champagne itself was fought over – in both England and in France.

This paper uses a number of cases reported in the UK trade press to illustrate how the champagne ‘houses’ and their London agents addressed the consequent consumer concerns and sought to control both their own names and the generic champagne brand. Hence there were battles with English entrepreneurs and battles within Champagne itself focused on which communes could legitimately produce champagne? The big houses wanted to expand the region; the economically threatened small farmers were bitterly opposed. Though this champagne was not the first appellation controlée in France it set the template that was followed some 20 years later when the first appellations were created.

Until recently there has been an American-led view that the Anglo-Saxon world both created modern ‘big company’ business and branding systems and led the way in trademark legislation. Paul Duguid, in a series of articles on the eighteenth and nineteenth century port trade, has challenged this and my work on champagne supports his contention that the 19th century French approach was far more influential than previously realised.

Graham Harding is a returnee to history after a career spent building the UK’s largest independent specialist marketing and branding agency. Initially trained at Cambridge he has now returned to do an MPhil on "The perception and marketing of champagne in England, 1800-1914". He has written several books including "The Wine Miscellany" (2005), which was published in UK, USA, France and other countries and has articles on Viognier and "The use of champagne in commissioning ships due to be published this year" (2014) in the "Sage Encyclopedia of Alcohol". He is starting a PhD in Oxford starting in autumn 2014. This will focus more on the links between England and France in the long nineteenth century and how French producers and English merchants and agents created the template for champagne as we know it today.

A sandwich lunch will be provided.