Combating illegal parallel imports of trademarked goods has been
gaining importance as part of brand protection strategy for
companies operating on the European market – however, the
recent changes in EU jurisprudence in this area may prove to be
quite a shakeup in terms of how this problem is approached in
national civil proceedings of respective Member States.
Parallel imports and exhaustion of trademark rights
The general rule is exhaustion of trademark rights, regulated in
Article 15(1) of the EUTM Regulation1. According to this
provision, an EU trademark shall not entitle its proprietor to
prohibit its use in relation to goods which have been put on the
market in the European Economic Area (EEA) under that trademark by
the proprietor or with his consent. A contrario, if
certain goods have been put on the market by a party other than the
trademark proprietor, and the consent of the proprietor to put them
on the market is missing, the exhaustion of rights does
