Trademark group joins battle against plain packs

The International Trademark Association (INTA) has joined the legal battle against standardized packaging for tobacco products ‘in order to champion property rights’, according to a Breitbart story.

The INTA says that standardized packaging regulations should be rejected or repealed because, it believes, they violate various international treaties and national laws on trademark protection that safeguard the long-established principle that intellectual property rights are private rights.

Instead, it proposes that ‘less drastic measures’ such as public health campaigns and tax increases should be used as an alternative to the ‘expropriation’ of tobacco trademarks.

The INTA goes further than just defending the private property rights of the trademark owners and aims to show that standardised packaging rules produce unintended consequences detrimental to both competition and the consumers governments intend to protect.

The amicus brief filed by the INTA submits that consumers may become confused and unable to rely on the quality expected of familiar brands, that new brands will be barred from entering the market, that counterfeiting will be simplified, and that the cost of the product will likely decrease as price becomes the only differentiating factor.