Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-25-Speech-3-208"
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"en.20020925.10.3-208"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, firstly, I should like to apologise for my late arrival. The car that was supposed to collect me came half an hour later than arranged. That is why I unfortunately only heard part of your speech. However, I grasped the main points. Commissioner, the committee and indeed Parliament has not raised this matter lightly or for fun, but because we do not believe that the NERA study, on which you are relying, actually provides a solid enough basis on which to make decisions of this kind. In other words, our main premise is that it has been proved, without the need for a NERA study, that these goods – which are everyday items, which every woman and every man buys, in particular those from the poorer sections of the population – for example jeans, shirts, polo shirts, trainers and suchlike, are being offered for sale outside the EU by the same brand manufacturers at the same quality standards for half the price or even less. That is one of the reasons.
The second reason is that in our view the purpose of trademark law is not to seal off markets, allowing there to be different price systems inside and outside the EU, especially more expensive prices inside the EU and more reasonable ones outside; rather we are of the opinion that this is a matter for competition and not trademark law. The function of trademark law is to name, describe and unambiguously classify the manufacturer, the brand and the product and to confer certain rights on the trademark holder. These rights are justified and we will do all we can to defend them.
A completely different, separate issue is, however, that of exhaustion. In Germany, for around 100 years from the advent of trademarks we had international exhaustion. With this system of international exhaustion in place we in Germany achieved the economic miracle, significant growth and much more besides. In the last five years, since European trademark law has come in, we have observed a system of dual pricing, and we have observed that trademark law has become a preferred option for companies because it is far easier to assert your rights under trademark law than it is under other rights procedures, which are actually product-related, such as rights relating to design, patent and copyright; it is more difficult to present your case here. That alone is the reason and trademark law cannot after all be stronger than competition law. That is why we asked these questions. That is why we have asked you in the Commission not to rely on a NERA study but to conduct your own investigations into these specific matters and to answer on that basis.
Finally there is another question that has arisen since our past discussions on trademark law: what about trade on the Internet? There is of course nothing wrong with the Internet. We promote it. If someone outside the EU makes a purchase and the dealer dispatches the goods in the EU then this contradicts current trademark law. This cannot be the intention of trademark law either. Once again then we would urgently request the Commission to conduct further investigations into these few points and to inform Parliament of the result, and not to refer to a NERA study which in our view does not address these problems."@en1
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