Re: UK distributor wants me to stop my parallel imports

Mike Ross wrote: 
On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:43:27 +0000, Sharky <bill@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<big snip>

I guess if a supplier wanted to be evil (or just hard-nosed about protecting themselves) they would say that since they didn't sell the goods to YOU directly, and no legitimate dealer would want to admit to breaking his lecense and selling them to you - then the goods must be fake and thus you are breaking their copyright?
It would then be up to you to prove that they were not fakes.
To which the manufacturers solicitor would say "Well, they are very good fakes, have our manufactur numbers etc, but as experts in making this stuff our client denies making them and can show that items with this code were only sold in America - so these can't be real" 


With respect, that's preposterous. All you do is draw the attention of
the manufacturers to this marvelous invention which they have
seemingly never heard of, called the 'post office'. They specialise in
moving things from one place to another - such as America to UK.

And how is the OP going to PROVE that he received genuine goods from America if the American distributor denies all knowledge.

The point of parallel imports is that you buy them indirectly from some dodgy distributor that sells them COD to a third party who then sells them to the unlicensed distributor. The licensed distributor has receipts to show he sold them legitimately in his home territory as small batches to end users.
Last thing licensed distibutor wants is paperwork that shows he broke his license terms.

I go through this all the time, I have to buy genuine machine parts for machines we service and the UK (and other European) distributor won't sell directly to competitors - so we buy from a company in France who order goods from the French distributor.
As a result, we have bills for 'parts to suit XXX' rather than 'genuine xxx parts' so that the applecart does not get upset.

So, maybe the OP's got some shipping notes for some of the items, who is to say that ALL his stock is genuine and he isn't mixing in stuff he got elsewhere.

'this code was only sold in America so these MUST be fakes' is such a
breathtaking logical fallacy that anyone with two brain cells to rub
together wouldn't say it, or wouldn't believe it if someone else did.

Trading Standards (and probably independent experts) seldom have
trouble determining the difference between genuine items and fakes,
even very good ones - I strongly suspect the manufacturers and their
solicitors would determine very quickly that the items were genuine.

Mike
--

Its very easy to prove that an item is fake, much much harder to prove that something is genuine, especially when the manufacturer says they arn't real.
If a manufacturer makes a widget, only sells to licensed distributors who sell in small quantities to end users, and a unlicensed ditributor starts selling large quantities of them the question must arise where they came from. If the manufacturer says 'can't be real' we haven't sold any to this guy, why should TS believe the unlicensed distributor?

After all, if you suddenly started Van Gogh masterpieces and the Louvre and other museums said 'can't be real, we have all the real ones accounted for', then no matter how many experts say they are real, the owners will say "well, if he didn't buy them from us, they can't be , end of story'

Or if you had a batch of real ten pound notes stolen from the Royal Mint, and tried to use them - how likely is it that the Mint would say that they were very good forgeries rather admit that they were real and have no idea how they managed get out of the Mint past their high security.








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