Legal Controls for the use of Comparative Commercial Advertising

Abstract

Comparative commercial advertising is distinguished from the rest of the methods and forms of other advertisements in that the advertiser takes a different approach with a dual nature. It is not enough, as usual, to highlight the characteristics and advantages of his commodity or service, but in addition to that, he degrades the advantages of a similar commodity of a competing merchant, highlighting its defects and reducing its value or By exposure to the person of the competitor in his reputation and fame, and despite the wide spread of this method of advertising and its frequent use, the Iraqi legislator did not regulate its provisions in view of his neglect of regulating commercial advertising in general with objective rules, just as the legislator in the Kurdistan Region-Iraq neglected the regulation of comparative advertising despite issuing a law Regulation of commercial advertisement No. (4) of (2019). In view of the importance of comparative commercial advertising at the present time as a factor in marketing and promotion of products, a manifestation of legitimate competition, and a tool for contacting customers and improving product quality, the direct approach is to approve the prohibition rules related to misleading advertising on this type of advertisement as an unfair commercial practice. It is considered an unfair course and contrary to the recent trends of comparative legislation, including the French legislation, which dealt with and authorized it under the consumption law when it focused on the essential characteristics of similar goods, including accurate, honest and objective data, so this study came to provide the Iraqi and Kurdistan legislators with results and recommendations that require allowing the advertiser this type of advertisement In light of tight legal controls that allow the advertiser to exercise his right to expression, address the public of consumers and provide them with information about the various alternatives of competing products, and prevent him from everything that would mislead the consumer and influence his choices, and at the same time ensure that he does not harm the competitor or detract from the special
products he offers, which reflects positively on freedom of competition.