Was an importer free to use the trademark owner’s mark where the trademark owner had no control over the product imported?
Our Intellectual Property team acted for a parallel importer who wished to utilise the trademark of a UK distributor in order to achieve market penetration for a product imported from a European Union state. The Court of Appeal held that the UK distributor had no control over the imported product. Consequently, the UK distributor had a legitimate interest in enforcing its mark against a product that it had itself not placed on the market, and even though the imported product was therapeutically identical to the UK distributor’s product, and produced by the same manufacturer.
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