Grey Market

[Michael Feldman]

Julio,

Prior to the 1998 Supreme Court case referenced above, it was definately legal to set up exclusive importing and licensing agreements in the USA. Many ?official? importers collected civil damages against gray market importers (usually not individuals). But there was one major condition that had to be met to enforce the trademark: the exclusive USA importer cannot be owned (directly or indirectly) by the manufacturer. Therefore, Mamiya America Corporation could (prior to 1998) enforce its exclusive trademark license, since it is not owned by the manufacturer (despite its name), and it filled for and received the trademark for these products in the USA.

The justification for this has been that companies like Mamiya America Corporation pay for all the marketing costs in the USA (magazine ads, trade show representation, repair service, stocking parts, etc.). They are in effect paying the manufacturer (by bearing the cost of USA advertising and marketing themselves) for this exclusive right to import, and they would suffer harm if the manufacturer allowed gray market imports into the USA. The gray market goods are usually purchased from countries that have no local advertising and marketing support costs.

However, in the case of NikonUSA and CanonUSA (who are owned or controlled by their Japanese parent companies) there has been no legal restriction (at least not for quite a few years) to gray market imports since the importer (same company as the manufacturer) was not harmed regardless of who sold the goods to the consumer (the importer and the manufacturer are really one and the same). That is why you see B&H Photo sell gray market goods from Nikon and Canon (along with the official USA goods), but they do not usually sell gray market goods when the official USA importer is independent of the manufacturer.

It is important to note that, the 1998 Supreme Court case notwithstanding (the facts of every case are not identical), Mamiya America Corporation still claims that their exclusive trademarks are valid in the USA. Whether they could prevail in court is open to debate.

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

Robert White doesn't pay taxes in this country to keep your kids in school, your roads free from potholes, your water clean, your navy and army and airforece staffed, etc. etc. etc. Kevin

[mark lindsey]

oh my god! well I guess we better string that worthless scum up on a tree! god knows we live on this planet all by ourselves!

[Jonathan Brewer]

Quit your Bogus flagwaving, patriotism and loyalty work BOTH WAYS!! Where's the loyalty of the distributers and vendors around here to us, the people that keep them in business?

Explain to me how Robert White can charge as much as half of what they charge around here for some gear and still stay in business? What in the hell are you talking about? The countries not going down the tubes if we quite padding the bank accounts of some folks around here!

I had the carpet in my house replaced last year, when I was estimates done, I two people come over to give me an estimate, one drove an old '78 Mercedes SL, and one drove an $80,000 BMW. The quality of the carpet, the amount of work each was willing to do, the honesty vs the greed of these two was evident down the line.

One offered me a good quality carpet, a good installation, and was satisfied with a small but comfortable profit, and one just wanted to throw any old piece of shit into my house. He wasn't thinking about schools, hospitals, or the Army, just greed, like the folks you're trying to defend.

Paying out good hard earned money to feed greed isn't Patriotic, isn't american, it's dumb.

[tim atherton]

"Robert White doesn't pay taxes in this country to keep your kids in school, your roads free from potholes, your water clean, your navy and army and airforece staffed, etc. etc. etc. Kevin"

LOL - and your point is...?

[Glenn Kroeger]

Hmmmm... Robert White does pay taxes in Britain so that British kids can go to school, grow up to be British soldiers, and be our staunchest allies, so paying a smaller amount for goods there does that and leaves me money to spend locally on other things than padding greedy distributors pockets.

[Glenn Kroeger]

And by the way, the taxes I pay around here don't seem to do doodly squat for eliminating potholes.

[Julio Fernandez]

Michael: you have provided learned opinion on grey goods which answers and clarifies issues of law and lay logic. Great to see that the law makes sense. Your posting is valuable reference material which goes into my computer to stay. Many thanks. Glen: Potholes, really, in the sunny south? what excuse for them without the deep frosts that make ours in Canada? Get Mamiya America to create a pothole fund with their pickpocket money!

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

My Point is that your local distributor contributes to your government, and hires people that need jobs, and pays for their hospitalization insurance, etc. etc. etc. Yes, you can make the argument that all that is well and fine but I shouldn't have to pay for it. The only trouble is that one could make the argument that we should not support your employer or your business for the very same reason and you would be out of a job and not paying the taxes we need, etc. etc. etc. In my 30 years of photography I cannot believe how many people I have had personally bitch to me about how expensive photography equipment was and how they were getting ripped off. A few had legitimate complaints (those on fixed incomes) but the majority either smoked, or drank, had expensive SUVs, belonged to country clubs, went out to eat alot, had snowmobiles, motorcycles, etc. etc. etc. I am sure that my income is considerably less than almost everyone else who is reading this, yet I have found a way to own a hasselblad system, full set of lights, meters, light stands, and a sinar 8 x 10 with their shutter, etc. And I purchased all of it save for a lens or two in this country. Thats my point. Kevin

[Michael Feldman]

Keep in mind than when purchasing from Robert White, USA customers are avoiding the 17.5% VAT (value added tax) that everyone else in the EU must pay. I imagine that the average EU resident is not happy about that.

But the real issue at hand is the idea of the ?distributor.? The existing 3-tier supply chain model that some businesses currently use (manufacturer/distributor/retailer) is an anachronism in the age of the Internet. The Robert White model (manufacturer/retailer) eliminates the middleman and significantly contributes to the productivity of the economy. These productivity gains are measured by the US Federal Government and are frequently mentioned by Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) as the primary factor for the economic prosperity of the past decade. The use of middlemen in the supply chain adds zero to productivity measurements.

Bob Solomon of HP Marketing (USA distributor of Rodenstock, Heliopan, Wista, Linhoff, and others) is a sometimes contributor to this forum. In response to questions about products that HP Marketing distributes, he often asks that we send him an email, and he will mail us a brochure. I once asked him why HP (or the manufacturer) does not convert the all the (very expensive full color glossy) brochures to PDF files (or other digital format) and put them on the Internet. His response was less than satisfactory, which is not surprising since this would probably put him out of a job.

In a free country, Mamiya America Corporation, HP Marketing, and the manufacturers they represent can distribute their products however they please (within the law), but don?t expect me to pay for their inefficiencies. Companies that cannot exploit technology and eliminate (or significantly reduce) costs in the supply chain (e.g., middlemen) will eventually end up in the ash heap of history.