Francesca Basto
Francesca is Associate in the Intellectual Property department at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Milan. She mainly focuses on both contentious and non-contentious IP matters, advising clients on the protection and enforcement of valuable intellectual property rights across multiple industries, ranging from pharmaceutical and life sciences, design, fashion, TMT, consumer goods, media and advertising.
Francesca is admitted to the Milan Bar as of June 2025.
She graduated cum laude in law from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. During her studies, she spent a semester at the Université de Lausanne, as part of the Swiss-European Mobility Programme (SEMP), focusing on Intellectual Property law. She further gained practical experience through an internship at a Milan-based boutique law firm with a strong focus on intellectual property.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualified Year
- 2025
Experience
- Lawtelier Avvocati Associati (2021 - 2022)
Membership
- INDICAM
Qualification
- Law Bachelor Degree (2022)
Education
- Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (2016-2022)
1 Contributions by Francesca Basto
PRACTICE NOTES
EU geographical indications (PDO/PGI): international framework, 2024/1143 reforms, regimes for wine, spirits, agricultural and craft/industrial products, registration and opposition, enforcement, trade mark interplay, and the Geneva Act
This Practice Note provides a concise overview of the legal safeguards available for geographical indications (GIs) and designations of origin, including appellations of origin, protected designations of origin (PDOs) and protected GIs (PGIs) under international and EU law. It explains the global framework grounded in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement), alongside the protection afforded by EU regulations, with particular focus on the regimes applied to different product categories. It also outlines the enforcement routes open to rights holders, and finally reviews how appellations of origin, PDOs and PGIs interface with trade mark law. For guidance on GI protection under UK law, see Practice Note: Protection of geographical indications—UK.
International protection of geographical indications
Protection of GIs has been achieved through a range of mechanisms dating back to the 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. The Paris Convention recognised three distinct safeguards connected to a product’s provenance:
indications of source — these denote the geographical place where products originate but...
EU Law
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