At 16:30 3/26/02, Paul Farrar wrote:
The only problem camera brand for the US that I know of right now
is Mamiya. The US distributor owns the US rights to the name
"Mamiya", rather than the Japanese camera company. They charge a
very large markup and enforce their rights as sole importer.
Individuals still have the right to bring in items purchased abroad
for personal use, rather than resale, but I think that's limited to
one of each item per year. There are reports that persons bringing
in larger quantities have been required to obliterate the
trademarks. I think that many years ago some other US distributors
had similar policies (Ehrenreich with Nikon), but nowadays these
brands are freely imported for retail sale (but without official
warranty), for example by B&H, which for many years has been, for
all practical purposes, Olympus's only real OM dealer.
Paul
At one time, post-war Carl Zeiss Jena products from East Germany could not
be imported into the U.S. with the name "Zeiss" or any Zeiss logo, by
wholesaler, retailer or private party, without obliterating the name. One
of the names used by them for products exported to the U.S. (and some other
countries) was Jenoptik.
-- John
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