“Liberty of the individual is a thing of the past, or the future, in Palestine”, wrote Bernard Joseph, a distinguished member of Israel's “government in the making” in 1948, shortly before Israel was inaugurated as a sovereign state. Joseph's “present” was the dusk of British rule in Palestine. Draconian Defence (Emergency) Regulations suspended conventional liberties ordinary westerners were accustomed to expect and turned Palestine into a police state.

Precisely what “liberty of the individual” the esteemed jurist, who held degrees from both McGill University and the University of London, had in mind when he invoked the past of Palestine is not entirely clear. He could not have possibly meant liberty under the Ottoman regime which prevailed until 1918. Ottoman rule in Palestine was authoritarian, feudal and corrupt.

The United States Supreme Court has recently defined the phrase “gray-market good” as: “a foreign-manufactured good, bearing a valid United States trademark, that is imported without the consent of the U.S. trademark holder”. The importation of genuine goods by someone other than the designated exclusive importers, which is usually referred to as “parallel importation”, is not a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, in the last ten years the volume of gray market goods has increased dramatically and the issue has received considerable attention from the courts, the news media and numerous legal commentators. The imports are “parallel” in the sense that they are made by the same manufacturer who makes the domestic trademark owner's goods. They are “gray-market” goods since they are legitimately sold abroad, but are not authorized by the domestic trademark owner for sale in the domestic market. The goods are also “genuine” in the sense that tney are manufactured by the same source as the domestic owner's goods. The problem of parallel importation is a worldwide one which has been solved through case law in most countries. This article reviews recent developments in the United States and Israel concerning parallel importation.