Violation of the Fair Trade Law by Lien Hua P'u T'i Co., Ltd. for falsely advertising its "Healthy Environmental Protection Incense"
Chinese Taipei
Case:
Violation of the Fair Trade Law by Lien Hua P'u T'i Co., Ltd. for falsely advertising its "Healthy Environmental Protection Incense"
Key words:
false advertisement, comparative advertisement, cancer-causing substance, environmental protection
Reference:
Fair Trade Commission Decision of 12 August 1998 (353rd Commission Meeting); Disposition (87) Kung Ch'u Tzu No. 8700177
Industry:
General Advertising Industry (7601)
Relevant Laws:
Summary:
Lien Hua P'u T'i Co., Ltd. (respondent) promoted sales of its "Lien Hua P'u T'i Healthy Environmental Protection Incense" (Incense) by using advertising literature that included wording such as "burning incense during worship rituals may cause cancer," and "the amount of cancer-causing substances contained in the smoke of a piece of traditional inferior incense is five-fold of that in second-hand (cigarette) smoke or ten-fold of that in automobile waste fumes." In addition, the respondent juxtaposed a picture of a clean Buddhist sanctuary using the Incense with that of a smoky one using traditional incense, intending to attack the image of those who sold traditional incense. The respondent also alleged that the Incense it sold would produce "an amount of smoke and tar 91% less than that produced by traditional incense." The respondent used a comparative advertisement to assert the superiority of the Incense for the purpose of sales promotion.
This Commission found that the respondent's advertisement was based on statistics contained in a research report by Chung Shan Medical Institute with regard to traditional incense being inferior in quality and containing several cancer-causing substances. However, the respondent referred to the said research report only in part, which was insufficient to support the comparative advertisement for the Incense. In addition, according to the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health, and various medical institutions, the smoke produced by burning incense varies according to the manufacturing method, production location, and materials. Moreover, though it is known that the smoke produced by burning incense, second-hand (cigarette) smoke, and automobile waste fumes contain various cancer-causing substances, it is difficult to represent the risk of each of these three types of smoke through simple, quantified statistics. Therefore, for making claims against competitors without presenting relevant evidence, the respondent's advertisement was obviously unfair to its competitors and found to be in violation of Article 24 of the Fair Trade Law.
As to the respondent's advertising the Incense as superior to others because of its beneficial environmental protection qualities, the respondent did not produce any scientific data to support such advertising, but only contended that the smoke produced by the Incense was visibly less than others. The ordinary consumer, viewing the respondent's advertisement as a whole that contains statistics regarding the environmental protection qualities of the Incense, may have been misled to think that the Incense indeed possessed the special environmental protection effect as alleged. Therefore, the respondent was found to have violated the Fair Trade Law in making false and untrue representations in its advertisement, misleading the ordinary consumer to form a mistaken belief or decision.
Summarized by Chen Wan-chen
Supervised by Wu Ting-hung
Appendix:
Lien Hua P'u T'i Co., Ltd.’s Uniform Invoice No.: 89654636