Parallel importing of perishable consumer goods is a potential danger to consumers and a threat to the commercial viability of brand-name producers, according to a group of multinational companies.
The companies, among them PepsiCo, Unilever, Colgate Palmolive and Levi-Strauss, are to lobby the Legislative Council to retain laws against parallel imports.
They will argue that freeing up the market in the interests of wider choice is misleading.
The companies are particularly concerned about an 'international exhaustion' clause a Legco committee is considering introducing to trademark legislation.
International exhaustion would mean that trademark owners and their distributors would be prevented from opposing importation to Hong Kong of authorised goods sold at lower prices under the same trademark through different distributors or licensees in other countries.
The Government is anxious to ease draconian parallel import laws which were hurried through Legco at the time of the handover.
