The Supreme Court recently affirmed once more that the exemptions to the principle of exhaustion of trademark rights must be construed narrowly.
Facts
The plaintiff traded in perfume products under a sublicence agreement using the EU word and figurative mark DAVIDOFF. Davidoff perfumes were distributed through authorised retailers in a selective distribution system.
The defendant was a mail-order company which also operated a web shop; some products were sold by the defendant directly, while others were sold by contractually bound distribution partners. The defendant did not belong to the selective distribution system of the plaintiff’s group. One of the defendant’s distribution partners offered original Davidoff products on the defendant’s web shop by using not only the wordmark, but also the figurative mark DAVIDOFF. The distribution partner purchased the Davidoff products from an authorised dealer in Germany but was not an authorised dealer itself.
ILO-Newsletter, dd. 04 June 2018
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