Following the raid of its wine shop in Binondo last April 8, Solid Wine Marketing now seeks to suppress the 153 wine bottles obtained by the operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation as evidence for the criminal offense called unfair competition under Sec. 168 of R.A. 8293 (Intellectual Property Code).
In its Motion to Quash Search Warrant, Solid Wine Marketing refutes having committed the offense by saying the products it offers to sell are not sourced from the exclusive distributor Artisan Cellars and Find Foods Inc., but obtained from ‘another source.’
This defense is also known as through parallel importation.
Parallel importation occurs when unauthorized goods which are authorized by the trademark holder to be sold only in specific territories abroad are imported without the trademark holder’s authorization, into market where they are not authorized to distribute or where another exclusive and authorized distributor is already operating as in the case of Artisan Cellars in the Philippines.
This commercial offense creates the so called gray markets which kills legitimate business as the products are brought in illegally and sold at usually lower and predatory prices resulting to a manipulative and anti-competitive price discrimination of genuine wine distributors like Artisan Cellars.
Opposing the quashal of the search warrant, Artisan Cellars and Find Foods Inc. filed its Opposition on May 20, arguing the appropriate product codes for DBR wines seized from the Binondo shop do not contain the appropriate product codes which confirms their illicit source. Artisan Cellars and Find Foods, Inc. maintained its exclusive right to distribute the said wine products through a letter of appointment engaged by the well-known French winer maker, Les Domaines Barons de Rothschild. Worse, these Solid Wine Marketing wine bottles do not bear the proper tax seals of the proper government agencies for imported items indicating that they are smuggled items.
Noting as well that Solid Wines admitted that they are merely engaging in parallel importation (a presumably lesser offense) while however, not being able to establish that the proper import duties were paid for the products that they have been selling to the public.
Either way, Artisan Cellars claims, Solid Wine is clearly committing criminal violations.