Research On Legal Issues Of Comparative Advertising

Under the environment of increasingly fierce market competition in China,the market operators are exploring every avenue,including advertising campaign,to fight for their brand awareness and market shares;one of the effective weapons used in the commercial battle is comparative advertising.The pros and cons of using comparative ads make this type of competitive tool a controversial issue since it first appeared.As there is no consensus on the definition,classification and legitimacy criterion of comparative advertising in both legislation and jurisdiction,China's legal regulation of comparative advertising is still at a preliminary stage and more and more people are calling for the reform of the existing regulation systems.The United States enjoys the longest history of comparative advertising and is famous for the non-restrictive legal regime;the UK,Germany and France implemented different policies on comparative advertising until the end of 20 th century,when their rules and regulations had been harmonized by the Directive 1997/55/ EC concerning misleading and comparative advertising,in which the comparative advertising is permitted as long as it can satisfy a series of stringent legal requirements.What the US and the European Union have experienced can be a useful resource for China's reform on legal regulation of comparative ads.Based on the fundamental theory analysis and the legislative and practical experience from other countries or regions,this paper illustrates the existing defects and problems concerning comparative advertising legislation and jurisdiction in our country,in order to propose some reasonable suggestions of improvement.Apart from introduction and conclusion,this paper is divided into four parts as follows:The first part is an overview of comparative advertising.The chapter conducts a research on the fundamental issues of comparative advertising,including the concept and the classification by referring to the definitions defined in the United States and the European Union.The second part is about the laws and practical problems of comparative advertising in China.The current legislation,its features and defects,as well as some domestic typical cases of comparative advertising are discussed in the context of unfair competition.In this chapter the author summarizes the existing legal provisions and typical cases in a tabular form respectively to enable a more targeted and persuasive analysis.The third part's topic is how the comparative advertising is regulated in different foreign countries or regions in terms of laws and practical experience.The legal regulations of comparative advertising in the United States,the European Union,the United Kingdom,Germany and France are systematically introduced in accordance with four aspects: overview of comparative advertising's legal system,laws and rules of comparative advertising,legitimacy criterion of comparative advertising,and the attitude towards different types of comparative advertising,by referring to different laws or codes in these countries.In addition,the author makes a conclusive analysis on these countries' regulations.The fourth part focuses on the improvement of the China's comparative advertising legal system.This chapter gives suggestions on the modification of the legal regulation system of comparative advertising in China,which are based on the study above.The recommendations cover a range of reform actions,for example,to make clear of comparative advertising legislation model in China,to amend existing legislation by adding provisions about the definition of and legitimacy criterion of comparative advertising,to permit direct comparative ads and the superlative comparative ads under certain conditions,and to strengthen the supervisory role of the advertising industry self-regulatory organizations.