Comparative advertising
Comparative advertising means that in advertising the performance of one or more competitors with their own offer compared is. In Germany , comparative advertising has been permitted since July 14, 2000 on the basis of an EC directive under certain conditions and regulated in the law against unfair competition (UWG). For example, the statements made must also be objectively verifiable and correspond to the truth. In addition, (comparative) advertising must not be misleading or disparage or disparage competitors. Before that, comparative advertising was allowed in Germany by making the competing product unrecognizable.
Legal Limits
Comparative advertising is regulated in Germany in Section 6 UWG. According to this, every advertisement that directly or indirectly makes a competitor or the goods or services offered by a competitor recognizable is comparative. It represents an unfair competitive act according to § 3 UWG and gives the competitor claims for injunctive relief and compensation if it
- does not relate to goods or services for the same need or purpose,
- is not objectively related to one or more essential, relevant, verifiable and typical properties or the price of those goods or services,
- leads to a risk of confusion in business dealings between the advertiser and a competitor or between the goods or services offered by them or the labels they use,
- unfairly exploits or impairs the reputation of the plate used by a competitor,
- degrades or denigrates the goods, services, activities or personal or business relationships of a competitor, or
- represents a product or service as an imitation or imitation of a product or service sold under a protected label.
Risks
Comparative advertising is a sensitive area of business law in which legal disputes can easily arise. Only economically strong market participants use comparative advertising really aggressively. This type of advertising is particularly useful when only a few large but well-known competitors, especially in the consumer goods market, take part in the market. In addition to the risk of legal disputes, your own image is also affected. For example, too aggressive advertising and too harsh attacks against the competitor can reduce the likelihood of your own brand. In practice, many companies sound out the legal limits or deliberately go beyond them, since their unfair advertising measures promise measurable successes up to and including lost litigation that are higher than the costs to be expected due to a lost litigation. The low-cost airline Ryanair provides several examples of this. Among other things, it quoted comparative prices that did not include additional costs.
Companies that have carried out comparative advertising campaigns
- McDonald’s vs. Burger King
- Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola , see also " Cola War "
- Deutsche Telekom vs. Tele2
- Saturn vs. Media Markt (both brands belong to Media-Saturn-Holding )
- Practitioner vs. Obi
- Apple vs. Microsoft and Intel
- O2 vs. Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone
- the Austrian mobile operator Telering vs. Competitors ( Telekom Austria , One , T-Mobile ...)
- Amazon vs. Apple
- Audi vs. Mercedes
- Thalia vs. Amazon
- the daily newspaper vs. Image (see Die tageszeitung # The relationship to Axel Springer Verlag )
- Rexona vs. Nivea
- Coop (Switzerland) vs. Migros , formerly also Denner vs. Migros
- Knorr vs. Maggi , the so-called "soup war".
- Sega vs. Nintendo , the so-called "console war"
- 1 & 1 vs. Deutsche Telekom
- Strato vs. 1 & 1
- Lidl vs. EDEKA and Real
literature
- Wolfgang Berlit: Comparative Advertising . Beck-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-49699-7
- Christian Eichholz: Degradation through comparative advertising · An investigation into European, German, English and Austrian law . Herbert Utz Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0811-9
- Oliver Marc Hartwich: Advertising, Competition and Law . Utz-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-8316-0343-X
- Danijela Saponjic: Comparative Advertising. Legal situation - practice - perspectives . Vdm-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-86550-096-X
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ buchreport.de ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
