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Copyright Act, 1976, s601, similarly enables importation of copies to be prevented unless the importation- not the reproduction - is with the licence of the copyright owner. The Australian Act, 1968, s37, and the New Zealand Act, 1962, s10, similarly confer the right to control importation. The texts of these provisions are set out in the appendix. The Singapore Copyright Act, 1987, is unsatisfactory on this point, but Singapore, unlike the great majority of countries, is not a member of the Berne Convention.
10. Unfair competition A further argument against permitting parallel importation arises from the fact that most jurisdictions have legislation against unfair competition, which inevitably arises when a rights owner in a territory has to face competition from imports of copies which ride on the back of his investment in the availability and promotion of the goods in the territory, and without bearing the costs of that investment. Thus, in a recent case the Supreme Court of Israel (United Sport 1984 Ltd v Abraham Fadida et al [C.A. 724/88]) permitted an
an injunction to be granted against parallel importation on grounds of unfair competition.
It is sometimes
11. Economic consequences of parallel importation suggested that parallel importation can be beneficial to consumers by enabling them to have access to the cheapest and earliest source of copies.
This assumes, however, that temporary greater cheapness of some goods can be easily translated into greater cheapness overall of all such goods required by consumers. This is not so. Goods from an alternative source may sometimes be cheaper or available earlier, but this is dependent on actual availability and, for example, exchange rates. But the possibility of obtaining goods from such sources greatly discourages investment in wide stockholding by a publisher, distributor or
or wholesaler within the territory, SO that the cost of obtaining the wide range of goods required by consumers (and by retailers for selling to consumers) greatly increases, with highly detrimental effects on both availability and price.
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of
The Australian experience The transitory benefits permitting parallel importation have received some support in the book trade in Australia, where some booksellers have argued that consumers are deprived of earlier availability and lower prices of titles available from the US but for which the publishing rights in Australia had been licensed to UK or Australian publishers, with copies available in Australia only under the exclusive Australian publishing right. These arguments met with some acceptance from the Copyright Law Review Committee, which recommended the possibility of parallel importation in certain limited circumstances, and from the Prices Surveillance Authority, which went further and recommended the abolition of the control of importation of copies licensed by the rights owner for sale elsewhere. However, quite apart from the
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