Jonathan Griffiths gave a paper on 'Plain Packaging Legislation, Trade Marks and the Fundamental Right to Property' on Seili Island, Turku, Finland on 6 June 2014. The paper was given at a workshop organised within the 'eCoherence' research project at the University of Turku, which examines the reconciliation of economic and non-economic values in various legal contexts.
Tobacco companies claim that the introduction of plain (or standardised) packaging legislation for tobacco products would violate their fundamental right to property (in their trade marks and other intellectual property). In the paper, he argued that (in Europe, at least), such claims are not well-founded.
Recently, the United Kingdom government has indicated that it intends to introduce plain and standardised packaging legislation for tobacco products in this jurisdiction. For more information, please see the report, 'Standardised (plain) packaging of tobacco products' [PDF 920 KB]