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1. Without prejudice to Article 44, at the time of registration of the geographical indication, the Office may decide to grant a transitional period of up to five years to allow, for products originating in a Member State or a third country, the designation of which consists of or contains a name that is in breach of Article 40, the continued use of the designation under which they were marketed, provided that an admissible opposition, under Article 15 or 25, to the application for registration of the geographical indication of which the protection is contravened, has shown that:

(a) the registration of the geographical indication would jeopardise the existence of an identical or similar name used in the course of trade for the purposes of product designation; or (b) such products have been legally marketed with that name for the purposes of product designation in the territory concerned for at least five years preceding the date of the publication of the application provided for in Article 22(7).

2. The Office may grant a transitional period of up to 15 years or may decide to extend the transitional period granted under paragraph 1 up to a total period of 15 years, provided it is additionally shown that:

(a) the name referred to in paragraph 1 has been in legal use consistently and fairly for at least 25 years before the application for the registration of the geographical indication concerned was submitted to the Office;

(b) the purpose of using the name referred to in paragraph 1 has not, at any time, been to profit from the reputation of the name that has been registered as a geographical indication; and (c) the consumer has not been or could not have been misled as to the true geographical origin of the products.

3. Decisions granting or extending a transitional period, as referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2, shall be published in the Union register.

4. During the transitional period, when using a name referred to in paragraph 1, the indication of the country of origin shall clearly and visibly appear on the labelling and, where applicable, as part of the product description where the product is marketed on an online sales website.

5. With a view to achieving the long-term objective of ensuring that all producers of a product designated by a geographical indication in the geographical area concerned comply with the related product specification, a Member State may grant a transitional period for achieving compliance of up to ten years, taking effect from the date on which the application is submitted to the Office, provided that the operators concerned have legally marketed the product in question, using the name concerned continuously for at least five years preceding the lodging of the application to the competent authority of that Member State and have referred to that fact in the national opposition procedure referred to in Article 15.

6. Paragraph 5 shall apply, mutatis mutandis, to a geographical indication referring to a geographical area situated in a third country. The obligation to refer in the national opposition procedure to the continuous use as referred to in that paragraph shall not apply to geographical indications referring to a geographical area in a third country.