France: CJEU issues decision on reconditioning by parallel importers
Managing IP is part of the Delinian Group, Delinian Limited, 4 Bouverie Street, London, EC4Y 8AX, Registered in England & Wales, Company number 00954730
Copyright © Delinian Limited and its affiliated companies 2024

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

France: CJEU issues decision on reconditioning by parallel importers

Sponsored by

beau-de-lomenie.png

Jurisprudence has had fixed rules for a long time on the reconditioning of pharmaceutical products by parallel importers, without the consent of the trade mark owner.

The reconditioning must not affect the original condition of the product. The presentation of the product must not harm the image of the brand and its proprietor. If there is new packaging, it must clearly indicate the person who carried out the reconditioning and the product. Finally, the importer must notify the trade mark owner of the future sale and provide him with, on request, a specimen of the reconditioning.

These conditions allow the trade mark owner to maintain some control over the distribution of his products by parallel importers.

New opportunities for the parallel market are now offered by a decision recently rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) (decision of the CJEU, May 17 2018 C-642/06).

In this case, the parallel importer added a new label on the pharmaceuticals to permit their importation. The trade mark owner opposed this commercialisation insofar as the importer failed to inform him about this reimport and the new packaging adopted.

The Court noted that in all cases until then the reconditioning had required the opening of the original packaging. Here, the packaging had not been modified, nor the original presentation affected.

The Court made the following points:

(i) the importer had limited himself to affixing an additional label on an unprinted part of the packaging, which had not been opened;

(ii) this label was small and included only the name of the parallel importer, its address and telephone number, a barcode and a pharmacological number.

As a result, affixing such a label did not contravene the trade mark holder's rights, and the parallel importer was not obliged to inform the trade mark holder of his action.

marie.jpg

Aurélia Marie

Cabinet Beau de Loménie

158, rue de l’Université

F - 75340 Paris Cedex 07 France

Tel: +33 1 44 18 89 00

Fax: +33 1 44 18 04 23

contact@bdl-ip.com

www.bdl-ip.com

more from across site and ros bottom lb

More from across our site

Rob Stien, chief communications and public policy officer at InterDigital, says the EU has forgotten innovators while trying to solve an issue that doesn’t exist
As Australia’s Qantm IP leans towards being acquired by a private equity company, sources discuss what it could mean for IP firms
Law firms that are conscious of their role in society are more likely to win work, according to a survey of over 23,000 in-house professionals
Nghiem Xuan Bac Pham, managing partner of Vision & Associates, discusses opportunities created by the US-China rift as well as profitability issues facing IP practices
Douglas Leite and two of his colleagues were intrigued by Bhering Advogados’s mission to grow its patent litigation practice
Each week Managing IP speaks to a different IP practitioner about their life and career
Counsel explain how pricing flexibility, patent agents and being business partners can help them maintain profitable patent prosecution practices
We provide a rundown of Managing IP’s news and analysis from the week, and review what’s been happening elsewhere in IP
Speakers at an INTA event weighed in on why firms should create AI use policies and how they stay on top of the latest developments
The England and Wales Court of Appeal backed Lidl in its trademark dispute with Tesco, but we should pay more attention to how we rule on first-instance decisions
Gift this article