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Federal Constitutional Court Rejects Ban on Benetton Shock Ads: Free Expression, Fair Competition and the Opaque Boundaries Between Political Message and Social Moral Standards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Extract

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On December 12, 2000, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) issued its judgment concerning the controversial “shock” advertising campaign of the Italian fashion designer and retailer United Colors of Benetton. Momentaufnahme reported on the oral arguments before the FCC. (No. 3/2000 - Nov. 15, 2000). The Second Senate of the FCC found the 1995 decisions of the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ), which upheld bans on the Benetton advertisements, to be unconstitutional because the bans constituted an infringement of the constitutionally protected right to freely express one's opinion. The Benetton marketing campaign used large format photography depicting provocative issues, including: a duck smothered in oil, apparently from an oil-spill; children being exploited as laborers in a third-world factory; and a naked buttock bearing the stamp “H.I.V. Positive.” Publication of the Benetton advertisements had been challenged as “unfair competition” by a leading consumer protection group (Zentrale zur Bekämpfung unlauteren Wettbewerbs e.V., Bad Homburg).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

See Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] Vol. 102, p. 347. Also published in: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 2001, p. 591.Google Scholar
Decision of the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) of July 6, 1995 in: 130 BGHZ 196.Google Scholar
Decision of the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) of July 23, 1997 in: 136 BGHZ 295.Google Scholar