ECJ Decision in Zino Davidoff/Levi Strauss

Background

In the 1998 Silhouette case, the European Court of Justice ("ECJ") decided that it was not open to individual EU States to decide that trade mark owners were unable to prevent the parallel importation of genuine branded goods originally sold outside the EU. However, parallel importers hoped that the English law doctrine of "implied consent" meant that in many cases trade mark rights could not be used to prevent retailers from importing such goods and that the decision in Silhouette could thereby be circumvented. In 1999, Laddie J suggested in Zino Davidoff (an English High Court case) that implied consent arguments were available and went on to refer a number of questions to the ECJ concerning this issue. Pumfrey J referred further questions in a hearing that came before him as part of the ongoing Levi Strauss/Tesco litigation.