Is Sun killing secondary market in Europe?
In A complaint filed to the Office of Fair Trading in the UK by the Association of Service and Computer Dealers International or ASCDI states that Sun has infringed competition law of UK and closed the secondary market of Sun products in Europe as it has refused to provide resellers with provenance information with regards to its equipments. They further say that as a result of the policy of the company they have been forced to shift their focus on to other product lines and as a result now they have a large inventory of Sun products which can only be sold off at considerable losses.
As per ASCDI it is the only company which is resisting from revealing the information. The market for products of Sun in EU is worth $1.4 billion and reseller market is worth $533 million but this action of Sun will not only lead to drop in their revenues but other manufacturers may also follow suit driving resellers out of the market. They all want that Sun should disclose the information or they would be robbed of their businesses.
Earlier Sun had taken Amtec which is a UK reseller to court for infringing its trademark for trafficking in Sun system which was sold in Israel but was directed through several European countries to UK and now sun wants that resellers cant sell used equipments which were not manufactured for that particular country and appropriate paperwork would be required in this regard and as a result a number of resellers have been suffering.
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:39 am
Sun definitely has seized the opportunity to limit the sale of used equipment that doesn’t come through their channel.
Ever since the legal precedent had been set by a Levi’s case in the EEA (European Economic Area?) that goods which originated outside of the EEA can’t be sold by anybody but the manufacturer’s reps without being penalized for trademark infringement, Sun has taken advantage. Other manufacturer’s like HP are embracing this precedent, but where Sun really gets anti-competitive is by not providing a way for secondary resellers to identify where the equipment originated from. Sun is the only one who is privy to that information with their serial number info.
My company, Vibrant, sells used Sun hardware in the US and we’ve naturally seen a huge decline in our exports to Europe since these policies have gone into place.
I believe that Sun will be forced to provide their serial number information on origination once this all shakes out. Hopefully the visibility also wakes up EEA policy makers that the entire law regarding brand imports is not good for it’s consumers.
Corey Donovan – Vibrant Technologies