Phillip Morris says International Trade Commission will back its stand on imports

September 25, 2009

Eighteen months after tobacco giant Phillip Morris filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission, the ITC has taken action against illegal online imports of the company's Marlboro, Parliament, and Virginia Slim brands.

The complaint named 13 web site operators and 177 individual sites as violators of trademark law for reselling Phillip Morris products intended for overseas sale in the domestic market. The company said that these and other online importers of its products sold 800 million cigarettes in the U.S. in 2008.

Numerous recent federal and state tax hikes on tobacco products have driven more American smokers to seek cheaper alternative sources of cigarettes. Gray-market vendors in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere offer U.S. name brands for steeply reduced prices, but the cigarettes themselves are either counterfeit or intended for export sale only, and may be of much lower quality than U.S. cigarette smokers are used to.

Phillip Morris asserts that this amounts to a dilution of their legally held trademarks, and praised the ITC's decision to curtail the practice.

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