Posted by Jim Andrada on April 15, 2002 at 05:28:12:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: 2nd-hand tubas from Germany posted by Rick B on April 14, 2002 at 02:44:18:
I'd be a bit careful on this. I had a friend who bought a VERY expensive oboe (or maybe it was an English Horn) in Europe and when he got to the US he was told that he couldn't import it until he "defaced" the maker's name because the trademark was tightly controlled. They didn't care about him importing the instrument but they DID care about the trademark.
Having said all that, it's probably not a big issue if you bring in one horn for yourself, but I'm certain that you'd be stopped if you tried to make a business of it.
I used to work for a big computer company and they had signed an exclusive deal with an Australian company and I was always having to deal with a major Australian customer who was angry that he couldn't buy the software directly from us - he didn't want to deal with the authorized distributor, but he had no choice because the distributor owned the rights to the brand in Australia.
By the way, my friend was eventually able to get the inspecter to "not watch" while he "defaced the trademark" by pretending to run a file across the instrument.