To challenge the discrimination between the protection of geographical indications (GIs) for agricultural and non-agricultural products, the paper will review the history of GI regulations and analyses the GI specifications of agricultural and handicraft goods in the contrasting contexts of European and non European countries. Building on the comparative analysis of a wide range of cases, we highlight the need to reconsider the concepts of natural and/or human factors in determining the strength of the link to the origin for all kinds of goods. We recommend thus to abandon the criteria of product categorization and create a harmonized system for all GIs.