Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Austin, from another list, where this has been much discussed, so I can't account for it's accuracy: Prior to the 1998 Supreme Court case referenced above, it was definately legal to set up exclusive importing and licensing agreements in the USA. Many “official” importers collected civil damages against gray market importers (usually not individuals). But there was one major condition that had to be met to enforce the trademark: the exclusive USA importer cannot be owned (directly or indirectly) by the manufacturer. Therefore, Mamiya America Corporation could (prior to 1998) enforce its exclusive trademark license, since it is not owned by the manufacturer (despite its name), and it filled for and received the trademark for these products in the USA. The justification for this has been that companies like Mamiya America Corporation pay for all the marketing costs in the USA (magazine ads, trade show representation, repair service, stocking parts, etc.). They are in effect paying the manufacturer (by bearing the cost of USA advertising and marketing themselves) for this exclusive right to import, and they would suffer harm if the manufacturer allowed gray market imports into the USA. The gray market goods are usually purchased from countries that have no local advertising and marketing support costs. However, in the case of NikonUSA and CanonUSA (who are owned or controlled by their Japanese parent companies) there has been no legal restriction (at least not for quite a few years) to gray market imports since the importer (same company as the manufacturer) was not harmed regardless of who sold the goods to the consumer (the importer and the manufacturer are really one and the same). That is why you see B&H Photo sell gray market goods from Nikon and Canon (along with the official USA goods), but they do not usually sell gray market goods when the official USA importer is independent of the manufacturer. It is important to note that, the 1998 Supreme Court case notwithstanding (the facts of every case are not identical), Mamiya America Corporation still claims that their exclusive trademarks are valid in the USA. Whether they could prevail in court is open to debate. - ------------- Second, there has been recent a Supreme Court ruling that suggest that such exclusive import licenses are not enforceable. http://www.tradelaw.com/l'anza.htm But keep in mind that court rulings are not always applicable to other situations (with lightly different circumstances), and US Customs regulations are a very, very murky area of the law. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html