Yin Ting International Trading Ltd. ["YTIT'] was complained for misrepresentation as to the content of its product by using the name of "Chilean Canned Abalone" in violation of the Fair Trade Law
Chinese Taipei
Case:
Yin Ting International Trading Ltd. ["YTIT'] was complained for misrepresentation as to the content of its product by using the name of "Chilean Canned Abalone" in violation of the Fair Trade Law
Key Words:
untrue advertising, abalone
Reference:
Fair Trade Commission Decision of July 10, 1996 (the 247th Commission Meeting); Disposition (85) Kung Ch'u Tzu No. 116
Industry:
Import Trade Industry (5601)
Relevant Laws:
Article 21 of the Fair Trade Law
Summary:
1. YTFT was complained by consumers for having sold canned food made of cheap shellfish, but indicated on the can "Chilean Fresh Abalone" in Mandarin and "Abalone" in English in order to defraud consumers.
2. Whether an enterprise violates the provisions of Article 21 of the Fair Trade Law depends on whether the enterprise's advertisement contains false, untrue, or misleading representations. The product in question is canned food. Its content, expiration date, place of manufacture, date of manufacture, quantity of the total and solid content are all labelled on the packaging. Colorful pictures of the content are also glued to the can. As none of the packaging materials is transparent, consumers can only know the contents by the packaging and labeling and make the purchase decision accordingly. Compared with the actual contents, the picture on the packaging looks no big difference and therefore consumers would not be misled by such picture. However, the sanctioned party marked on the packaging of the product "Chilean Fresh Abalone" with enlarged blue Chinese characters and "Chilean Abalone" with conspicuous red English letters. These marks may easily lead consumers to mistakenly believe that the product is abalone despite that the name of the item on both the import customs declaration and the import inspection certificates provided by the sanctioned party is "Chilean Canned Locos."
According to the "Compilation of Chinese Taipei's Customs Import Duties and Classification of Import-Export Commodities," "seasoned or preserved locos" are different from "seasoned or preserved abalone." The product in question is made of locos imported from Chili, which is obviously different from another shellfish commonly known as abalone. In addition, after examining the said product, Taiwan Fisheries Research Institute stated that locos is a kind of Chilean rock shelling, which is commonly known as "loco" in Spanish and "false abalone" in English. In terms of classification, it falls into the Family of Muricidae, different from the Family of Haliotiidae to which abalone belongs. The investigation also shows that Chilean locos are different from abalone in the sense that the latter is superior to the former in terms of species, consumers' dietary preferences, and market prices. The product's content is locos but is marked on the packaging as "fresh abalone". It is obviously a matter of misrepresentation and leading people into mistakes. The defendant argued that it based on the product description printed on the packaging cartons originally imported from Chili to mark both "abalone" and "locos." Nonetheless, the advertiser has the duty to review and screen the content of its advertisements so as to avoid any obstruction to fair trade. The product in question, as described above, is not abalone, so the defendant's defense is not admissible. The Commission thus decided that the sanctioned party's advertisements have violated the provisions of Article 21 of the Fair Trade Law.
Summarized by Lu, Li-na
Supervised by Wu, Ts'ui-feng
＊: For information of translation, click here
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