Tobacco Plain Packaging in Australia

Overview

In 2011, the Australian Government introduced plain packaging as part of a comprehensive suite of new and existing tobacco-control measures. The plain packaging measures fully standardized the appearance of tobacco products and their retail packaging. It prohibited the use of certain trademarks and other marks to be used on tobacco products and their packaging (e.g. stylized word marks, composite marks and figurative marks) and permitted the brand, company, or business name and the variant name of the tobacco product to be printed only in a typeface, colour, style and font size prescribed by the regulations. These measures were challenged before the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the ground that they were inconsistent with the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The Panel dismissed all the claims brought by the complainants and the Appellate Body upheld its findings.

The Appellate Body’s affirmation of the legality of Australia’s plain packaging measures means that countries are likely to follow suit in implementing similar measures, and that they may do so with confidence about the legal status of those measures under WTO law.