From 1998 https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/1998/10/the-ecj-has-delive...

> The ECJ has delivered a landmark ruling which effectively allows trade mark owners to block the sale of goods bearing their trademarks within the EU, where the goods have been obtained on the so-called 'grey market' from suppliers outside the EU. The ruling means that the holder of a trade mark in the UK, or other EU country, can prevent the sale of parallel-imported goods from outside the EU even though such goods have been legitimately sold abroad in the first place. This means, in practice, that a trade mark holder can prevent retailers from obtaining goods bearing its trade mark cheaply from markets such as Asia or the US and selling them at a discount within Europe without its authorisation.

And more recently (2022): https://trademarkblog.kluweriplaw.com/2022/10/21/court-of-ju...

> The court may order that infringing goods be removed from the market, returned to the rightful owner, or destroyed. When making a decision, the courts consider the gravity of the infringement as well as the interests of third parties. Also, Article 10(1) of Directive 2004/48 (Enforcement Directive) states that a judge may order “destruction” of goods to enforce intellectual property rights.

That is: (1) vendors may abide by different standards elsewhere, and (2) implementation of those different standards may cause incompatibility (eg. US rear lights may not be compatible with EU models).

While that might not completely justify such rules in all cases, they're not always fully anti-consumer either.

So yes, deputizing trademark owners to police imports, on the off chance that maybe sometimes their decisions will align with other consumer-protection laws, is always fully anti-consumer.

You just can't register such a car in europe to be used as a "local car" (have plates of the current country) and driven on public streets.

You can also drive into europe with such a car (as long as it's legal in it's main country, and there is a treaty made by EU-that_country). While US cars are a rare thing to see here, there are a bunch of british right-hand drive cars all around europe driven by british drivers, that have bliding headlights for everyone else (becase the shape of the beam is different), and EU has no issues with that. You can even buy one in EU... but to register it under eg. german plates, you'll have to modify (well, replace) the headlights (not sure about the wheel).

There's got to be a point where that kind of car can't be legally driven in other countries, right? I would expect that, to drive in a country, your car has to meet the safety standards of that country.

My personal experience is europe, EU countries and the balkans, and all those countries allow all cars from all other countries to drive there (temporarily, when visiting or driving through), although some require additional equipment (snow tires in winter in some countries, extra pair of glasses in greece etc.).

For example above, EU mandates separate turn lights and brake lights, but you can still drive a US car in EU: https://www.a1autotransport.com/can-i-drive-a-us-plated-car-... (for 6 months max, if you return home)

Its quite trivial to take rental cars into other countries (but talk to the employees first they generally have to give you additional papers to prove insurance).

To allow cars that violate your country's safety rules seems weird.

So, if you want to mass import and sell vehicles that don't meet the safety standards you'll run into trouble.

But an individual temporarily working in another country bringing a personal/company car for their use with them doesn't. The USA does enforce that you take that vehicle home with you though or at least that's what foreigners tell me when others want cars from their country that aren't sold in the US.

I'm not sure whether the EU has a law about this, but most mainland EU countries mandate that UK cars crossing over to the EU mainland must fit headlight beam deflectors to prevent this issue. British drivers with cars that blind people are probably ignoring this law.

Coming back to the video, I think it is more an issue around Nikon US, eBay US and the seller. I don't think Nikon, or any other Japanese camera brand, are blocking international resale of used gear on eBay in general, there are way to many private and commercial sellers in Japan shipping through eBay to the US and the EU for thatbto be true.

Also, with all the account blocking stories and copy right take downs being discussed on HN basically every day, why do we all assume it is Nikon's "fault"? I mean eBay is a party in this, too.

Same in France. The requirement when buying a foreign car is that it must get vetted by the DRIRE (ex Mines), which might be easy (e.g a EU car typically already has a registered entry because vehicles are extremely similar to identical) or hard (e.g US cars being subject to different regulations), but if one vehicle of a specific type went through the process it now has an entry as well and it's a matter of checking that the ingress vehicle matches the previous entry, fast tracking the process. IIRC there are provisions for historical cars (véhicules de collection, i.e > 30yo) that are allowed to not be compliant with current regulations as long as they're stock (except for some bits, e.g IIRC tyres must be upgraded to radial tyres to be road-worthy). Still lengthy and costly.

(caveat: it's been a long time since I got interested in the process, things may have changed)

It's true that these rules are rarely enforced about you selling an old game to your mate in a bar... But in principle I think any IP rights holders of IP within that game could attempt to block such a sale.

And again, IANAL, but those import restrictions on grey imports make sense for protecting the offical distribution channels for new goods, e.g. because of warranties and setting sales prices. Used goods don't have warranties, beyond some basic ones, and OEMs usually don't care about those.