Hi! I have to write a seminar assignment for my course at Stockholms university. But i never had intellectual property law at home...so, please, could you help me?
The Case:
Hemopop, a small company in the South of Sweden with five employees, has a business concept: To purchase products cheap and sell them
expensive. The focus is on Walt Disney products, a company noted for its high price
policy. The Walt Disney DVD’s (Lion King, Aladdin, etc.) generally cost 5–7 Euro more
than films from competing studios. Hemopop’s business concept is to monitor and search
Europe for cheap surplus stock of Disney DVD’s, buy them, import them to Sweden and
sell them here, of course at a high price but undercutting the regular price by 3-4 Euros.
Prior to the introduction of the DVD, Hemopop faced a limited source of supply. In the
VHS context, the only imported videocassettes that effectively could be sold in Sweden
were videocassettes from Finland (where cassettes dubbed into Swedish were marketed)
and English language versions from U.K. and Ireland. The DVD meant a breakthrough,
since DVD discs contain all European language versions. This opened for imports from
all EC member states, in particular Southern Europe. A new interesting source of supply
for Hemopop is of course the new Eastern member states. However, the Walt Disney
Corporation has to some extent pursued a policy of uniform prices in all EC member
states. Although cheap stocks of DVD’s certainly still can be located and purchased in the
EC, this has lead to an expansion of Hemopop’s territory of supply. The company now
also buys DVD’s from surplus stocks in Eastern U.S. and Canada, imports them to
Sweden and sell them here.
Hemopop operates its selling of DVD’s exclusively over its website (
www.hemopop.se).
It is spelled out on the homepage: “Walt Disney DVD’s at VERY affordable prices”. To
maximize the effect, Walt Disney’s logotype is used. In addition, the DVD covers of
“Beauty & Beast” – with the sweet Belle and the terrible Beast – and “Lion King” – with
Simba and his funny friends Timon and Pumbaa – appears conspicuously on the
homepage.
Customers come pouring, order the DVD’s on-line and get the DVD’s sent home by
regular mail. Hemopop’s business is flourishing.
Walt Disney’s Swedish subsidiary, holder of all Walt Disney’s intellectual property rights
in Sweden, is very disturbed. They want Hemopop off the market. “Maybe we could
resort to our trademark rights and copyrights”, they figure.
I have to argue for Hemopop.
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Topic: time to help a student with a seminar assignment? (Read 1170 times)
