Trademarking a name to prevent others from selling similar goods under a similar name makes only sense if indeed you were the first one to do so since the law was in place. In a fight that has now lasted a decade, the village of Champagne (Switzerland), which happens to be producing wine since at least the 17th century, has been told that it could not use its own name. That name is reserved for wine coming from the French region of Champagne.

Now, the French are big on "appellation d'origine contrôlée", that is, the origin of wines needs to be certified. Given the wide variety of wines, and the fact that some wine growing locations have a bigger reputation, one may want to pretend to be from a region. In your are not from the region, that is fraud that should be covered by usual commercial law (false advertising). Where it gets iffy is when the wine maker is located in the fringes of the region. Does he really belong? This is the core of the French regulation, trying to prevent the dilution of a name.

What the Champagne region (France) is enforcing is preventing the (non-sparkling) wine of Champagne (Switzerland) from diluting the reputation of the Champagne name. Demand for the sparkling Champagne is high, so this did not prevent the Champagne region from expanding its name definition, thus acting exactly against the principle of "appellation d'origine contrôlée" it says it is defending. Sad.

An interesting twist to this is that there is a bakery in the Swiss village selling sticks it calls "flûtes de Champagne", an obvious pun on the situation. They are wildly popular in Switzerland.

And, of course, the dirty little secret about appellation controlee is that the French routinely truck grape juice from one region to another if the harvest in a particular region is bad!