The law of comparative advertising: Directive 97/55/EC in the United Kingdom and Germany

Book abstract:

Comparative advertising has great potential to mislead. It may consist of critical claims ('A is better than B') which may denigrate a competitor, or claims of equivalence ('A is as good as B') that may take unfair advantage of a competitor's goodwill. This book consists of a careful analysis of the comparative advertising directive, giving background both to the regulation of comparative advertising in the United Kingdom and Germany and to the passing of the Directive. The Directive is an important first step in the Commission's programme of unfair competition harmonisation and it applies to any advertisement that explicitly or implicitly identifies a competitor. It therefore has the potential to regulate the claims of advertisers and could have a dramatic effect on UK advertising practice. The Directive has been the subject of very extensive recent debate in Germany and this book focuses on the latest in thinking on this subject as well as proposing a model for reading directive 97/55/EC which attempts to make sense of a potentially confusing document.

The book consists of seven chapters; Introduction; Comparative advertising in the United Kingdom; Comparative advertising in Germany; The history, scope and exclusivity of the Directive; The substance of the Directive; The implementation of the Directive; The way forward. These are followed by four appendices: United Kingdom materials, German materials, European Community preparatory materials, and the text of Directive 97/55/EC (OJ 1997 L290/18).

Dr Ansgar Ohly is section head of the Commonwealth Referat at the Max-Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition Law, Munich. Dr Michael Spence is a Fellow and tutor in Law at St Catherine's College, Oxford.