Newsletter
GUIDELINES FOR HANDLING CASES INVOLVING ISSUANCE OF WARNING LETTERS
On 4 January 2001, the FTC passed amendments to the Guidelines for Handling Cases Involving Issuance of Warning Letters Against Infringe-ment of Copyrights, Trademark Rights or Patent Rights. The amended guidelines were promul-gated on 15 January 2001. The main changes are as follows:
Section 2 (amended)
An act of issuing a warning letter means an act by which an enterprise disseminates to its own or another enterprise's a trading counterpart or a potential trading counterpart of its own or of another enterprise information concerning the infringement by another enterprise of a copyright, trademark right or patent right owned by it, by any of the following means:
Warning letters;
Letters of notice;
Attorney letters;
Public letters;
Advertisement notices; and
Any other method sufficient to make its own or another enterprise's trading counterpart or po-tential trading counterpart aware of the alleged infringement.
Section 10 (new)
This section explicitly provides that the guide-lines also apply to cases where an enterprise improperly issues a warning letter disclosing that its rights are being infringed by an enterprise other than one in competition with it at the same stage of production or marketing, if the issuance of such a letter creates unfair competition.