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This article seeks to take a critical look at the proposed Common European Sales Law (CESL).

The article looks at the rationales given to support the enactment of the CESL. The approach is critical in nature seeking to vet the plausibility of the rationales given for a new regulation The article also takes a critical look at the CESL's structure and trilogy of coverage – sale of goods, supply of digital content, and supply of services.

The article exposes some of the shortcomings of the CESL and the dangers to substantive private law of crafting a regulation based on political feasibility.

The CESL as proposed offers some innovative ideas in areas of the bifurcation of businesses into large and small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as rules covering digital content and the supply of trade‐related services. In the end, the analysis suggests a more thorough review is needed to better understand the CESL's interrelationship with the Convention on Contracts for the International Sales Law (CISG) and EU consumer protection law.

Further analysis is needed and unanswered questions need to be answered prior to the enactment of the CESL into law. A practical first step would to begin with a more targeted law focused on internet trading and licensing contracts.

This article questions the rationales given for the enactment of an ambitious new regulation covering disparate areas of sale of goods, supplying (licensing) of digital content, trade‐related services, and consumer protection. It further questions the rationality and practicality of the creation of the designation of SMEs as types of businesses in need of extra protections not currently provided by contract law's general policing doctrines.

This article seeks to deal with the fundamental conceptual differences between consumer law and copyright law that render the application of consumer law to copyright‐law related conflicts difficult.

Following a normative approach to copyright and consumer law based on an analysis of the relevant literature and case law, the article examines in which situations consumers encounter obstacles when trying to rely on consumer law to invoke “privileges” granted to them under copyright law, such as the private copying exception.

Research shows that most difficulties lie in the fundamental conceptual differences between consumer law and copyright law regarding the objectives and beneficiaries of each regime, as well as diverging conceptions of “property”, “user rights” and “internal market”. Such discrepancies undeniably follow from the fact that each regime traditionally never had to deal with each other's concerns: consumers never played a role in copyright law, whereas copyright protected works were not seen as consumer goods.

By identifying the main conceptual differences between the two legal regimes, the article contributes in an inter‐disciplinary manner to the discussion on the place of the digital consumer under European law.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of unfair commercial practices in advertising and marketing law.

The differences addressed in the paper relate to the role or tasks of consumer law in regulating the marketplace.

A comparison of the UK, German and Nordic approaches reveal interesting differences at least in nuances in the approach to omission of information as an unfair commercial practice.

The paper provides useful analysis of the deeper understandings behind unfair commercial practices law.

Within a larger mandate of reviewing the key global trends concerning consumer protection in the electronic commerce (e-commerce) literature, this study aims to study the legal framework concerning e-commerce and consumer protection in the Sultanate of Oman and to analyse the current regulations concerning e-commerce and consumer protection.

This study followed the normative legal research approach and resorted to the desk research process to facilitate content analysis of literature containing consumer protection legislation and regulatory provisions in Oman in particular and the rest of the world in general.

The study reveals that consumer protection initiatives in Oman are well entrenched for offline transactions, but are relatively new and limited for e-commerce. In spite of the promulgation of consumer protection laws, electronic transaction law and cybercrime law, consumer protection measures for e-commerce in Oman do not address a large number of the global concerns necessary to build consumer confidence and trust in the online environment.

There is a dearth of information concerning Oman on this topic in the extant literature. The research also witnessed the lack of empirical data on the issue of consumer protection and e-commerce in Oman that offer a detailed database of consumer complaints and associated outcomes.

The mechanism of consumer protection in electronic transactions is not robust in many countries. Because of the lack of comprehensive and robust legislation, consumers remain vulnerable in the online contractual purchase process. Moving beyond the fragmented legislation, many countries are currently mulling an all-comprehensive e-commerce law, implications of this paper will help the policymakers in identifying the focus areas.

Consumer protection is a burning global issue in this era of consumerism. It is important to build consumer trust, transparency and integrity of transactions to reduce the risk and uncertainties of purchase.

Consumer protection studies conducted in the context of Oman, hitherto, deal more with data protection and dispute resolution mechanisms, and less with legal provisions, regulations and consumer confidence. The study shares newer insights based on a systematic review of legal and business databases. It is the first study of its kind in the context of Oman and the Middle East in general.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This study aims to discover the legal borderline between licit online marketing and illicit privacy-intrusive and manipulative marketing, considering in particular consumers’ expectations of privacy.

A doctrinal legal research methodology is applied throughout with reference to the relevant legislative frameworks. In particular, this study analyzes the European Union (EU) data protection law [General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)] framework (as it is one of the most advanced privacy laws in the world, with strong extra-territorial impact in other countries and consequent risks of high fines), as compared to privacy scholarship on the field and extract a compliance framework for marketers.

The GDPR is a solid compliance framework that can help to distinguish licit marketing from illicit one. It brings clarity through four legal tests: fairness test, lawfulness test, significant effect test and the high-risk test. The performance of these tests can be beneficial to consumers and marketers in particular considering that meeting consumers’ expectation of privacy can enhance their trust. A solution for marketers to respect and leverage consumers’ privacy expectations is twofold: enhancing critical transparency and avoiding the exploitation of individual vulnerabilities.

This study is limited to the European legal framework scenario and to theoretical analysis. Further research is necessary to investigate other legal frameworks and to prove this model in practice, measuring not only the consumers’ expectation of privacy in different contexts but also the practical managerial implications of the four GDPR tests for marketers.

This study originally contextualizes the most recent privacy scholarship on online manipulation within the EU legal framework, proposing an easy and accessible four-step test and twofold solution for marketers. Such a test might be beneficial both for marketers and for consumers’ expectations of privacy.

Country of origin has profound effects on consumer behavior; yet few studies have examined an antecedent of these effects: why some countries enjoy a positive image while others suffer a negative one. Developing an institutional theory of country image, the authors argue that weak legal institutions at the country level increase firm opportunistic behavior that expropriates consumers and decrease the product quality of local brands, thus decreasing the country’s image regarding its products and brands.

This study measures country image for products and brands using the number of valuable brands (i.e. brands included in the top 500 brands from 2008 to 2016) in a particular home country. Data concerning the rule of law in each country come from the World Bank, and data on the efficiency of countries’ judicial systems comes from Djankov et al. (2007). We also collect patent data from the US Patent and Trade Office, national culture from Hofstede Insights and GDP and GDP per capita from the World Bank as control variables. Panel Poisson regression, Tobit regression and truncated regression are used in the analyses.

Supporting the institutional theory of country image, both the rule of law and efficiency of the judicial systems show positive and significant effects on country image, even when economy size (GDP), degree of economic development (GDP per capita), level of technology and skill (patents) and culture are controlled.

To improve their country’s image and the brand value of local firms, policymakers should strive to strengthen legal institutions aimed at punishing firm opportunistic behavior in their countries.

Previous research on the country-of-origin effect has not yet appreciated the role of legal institutions in developing the construct of country image.

This is the first paper in a volume devoted exclusively to antitrust law and economics. It summarizes the other papers and addresses two issues. First, after showing that the federal courts generally view consumer welfare as the ultimate goal of antitrust law, it asks what they mean by that term. It concludes that recent decisions appear more likely to equate consumer welfare with the well-being of consumers in the relevant market than with economic efficiency. Second, it asks whether a buyer must possess monopsony power to induce a price discrimination that is not cost justified. It concludes that a buyer can often obtain an unjustified concession simply by wielding bargaining power, but the resulting concession may frequently – though not always – improve consumer welfare.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides: