{"id":86179,"date":"2026-11-03T15:27:35","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T14:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/?p=86179"},"modified":"2026-11-03T15:41:56","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T14:41:56","slug":"genuine-volkswagens-unlawful-imports-a-german-court-rules-on-parallel-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/genuine-volkswagens-unlawful-imports-a-german-court-rules-on-parallel-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"GENUINE VOLKSWAGENS, UNLAWFUL IMPORTS? A GERMAN COURT RULES ON PARALLEL TRADE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can a car manufacturer prevent the sale of its own genuine vehicles in the European Union?<br \/>\nOn 19 March 2026, the Hamburg Regional Court delivered a significant judgment in a dispute concerning 22 Volkswagen ID.6 CROZZ electric vehicles imported from China into Germany.<br \/>\nThe vehicles were genuine Volkswagens, manufactured for the Chinese market. However, Volkswagen challenged their resale in Germany, relying on its trademark and registered design rights.<br \/>\n<strong>The Court largely sided with Volkswagen.<\/strong><br \/>\nThe central legal issue was the principle of <strong>exhaustion of intellectual property rights<\/strong>.<br \/>\nUnder EU law, trademark and design rights are generally exhausted once goods have been placed on the European Economic Area (EEA) market by the rights holder or with its consent.<br \/>\nHowever, goods first marketed outside the EEA do not automatically benefit from this protection.<br \/>\nIn this case, the dealers could not establish that Volkswagen had consented to the vehicles being placed on the EEA market. Consequently, the Court found an infringement of Volkswagen&#8217;s trademark and design rights.<br \/>\nNotably, the Court also recognised Volkswagen&#8217;s claim for the vehicles to be surrendered for destruction, finding that removing the protected branding was not a practicable alternative.<br \/>\nThe judgment, which was not yet final when announced, raises broader questions about the relationship between intellectual property protection, parallel imports and market access.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/vw-ip.pdf\"><strong>The key takeaway?<\/strong><\/a> A product&#8217;s authenticity does not necessarily mean that its importation and commercial resale within the EU are lawful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a car manufacturer prevent the sale of its own genuine vehicles in the European Union? On 19 March 2026, the Hamburg Regional Court delivered a significant judgment in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86199,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86179\/revisions\/86199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klauberg.legal\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}