Tobacco will be sold in identical packages

Australian court has approved the first law in the world , which requires to sell tobacco identical packages.
The Court rejected the appeal of tobacco companies concerning the first anti-tobacco law in the world, which obliges the producers to sell the entire tobacco products in identical packaging, Bloomberg reports.
Now tobacco is to be sold in packages of olive color in Australia, on which, instead of company logo should be typed warnings about the harm of tobacco. The new law will come into force on December 1 of this year.
Tobacco manufacturers, among which are Japan Tobacco, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International and the Imperial Tobacco Group, tried to persuade the court that the ban on reflecting their logo on tobacco packages, violates their intellectual property rights. But the Court did not accept this argument, and at the same time, did not submit an explanation for that decision. However, this precedent has already interested European countries, Canada and New Zealand, which express interest in that method of struggle against smoking.
The negotiations on the unification of tobacco packages are in process in the UK. But still, they are wary, that such actions will violate their commitments to the World Trade Organization.
Australia as well didn’t avoid the complaints addressed to the WTO. Honduras, the Ukraine and the Dominican Republic have also submitted their pretense against the anti-tobacco wave to the WTO.

Fastinfo