Wine export regulator Wine Australia says new powers to stop "copycat" brands heading overseas will help protect the industry's reputation for quality.
The new rules enable Wine Australia to decline approval of shipments in cases where a product could not be lawfully sold in the country to which it would be exported.
This could include stopping the export of a wine from Australia that infringes intellectual property-related laws.
'Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that copycats and counterfeiters can move in when they can leverage somebody else's good reputation to make a buck," Wine Australia chief executive Andreas Clark said.
"Left unchecked, the damage accrues not just to an individual brand but to the reputation of the nation targeted and its other brands."
Mr Clark said the most important change in the new regulations is the capacity to assess whether an exporter is a "fit and proper person".
Exporters will also no longer be able to export on behalf of companies or individuals that are not themselves eligible to hold an export licence.
Wine Australia general counsel Rachel Triggs said a copycat wine need not be identical to a well-established brand, but only create a false impression and seek to benefit from the established brand's reputation.
The copycat wine could have a similar "get up" to the established brand: a similar label design, bottle shape and colour, or seal on the top of the bottle.
Consumers would mistake the copycat wine for the well-established brand unless they look very closely.
Ms Triggs said copycat wines were not widespread in Australia but could pose a threat as export markets continue to grow strongly.
Wine supplier Treasury Wine Estates welcomed the regulations, saying they would increase Wine Australia's power to stop copycat exports.
"Exports of copycat products from Australia have been jeopardising our industry's continued growth," TWE Australia and New Zealand managing director Angus McPherson said.
In February, Treasury Wine launched legal action against Rush Rich, claiming that Rush Rich had made unauthorised use of TWE's BEN FU trade mark, which is the Chinese transliteration for Penfolds.
TWE said at the time that it was particularly concerned about copycat wine which it believed was sourced and bottled through bulk wine suppliers and third- party bottlers in South Australia, and then exported under labels that copied the look and feel of Penfolds wines.
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