Review of law sciences
(2020) 130-139
8
and Omsk are flown by airplane BOEING-757 [55]. However, as a result of monitoring, in March
2007 the territorial Department of Antimonopoly Committee found that the same flights were
made by not only BOEING-757, but also by other types of airplanes. According to the cease and
desist order, the administration of the airport corrected the text of advertisement. However, the
department decided to impose the administrative fine to the airport administration and claimed that
the airport administration still violated the Article 13 of Advertising law because the advertisement
did not content the information about the license. The Economic Court of Namangan region also
supported the decision of the department [56]. In this case, the enforcement authority gave a
priority to excessive advertising during the evaluation of misleading advertising, which caused
unreasonable imposition of fine and harm on the legitimate interests of the airport administration.
Second, there is still lack of understanding and interpretation of deception concept in
practice, which makes the guarantee for protection very weak. The problem can be illustrated by
a typical case. In Beeline case, a mobile network operator named Beeline disseminated an
advertisement about new tariff plan "Best-Best MegaBit" on March 31, 2013. In the advertisement,
mobile operator described the tariff plan that "daily internet is free after 5 MB (MegaBit)".
However, the advertisement also included information with invisible small letters that
"technological limit of free internet is 25 MB per day, the MB over the limit is estimated as
$0,007/MB, free MB is not transferred the next day" [57]. The consumers complained to lawyers,
because the daily internet was not actually free after 5 MB, only 25 MB of internet was free per
day and the other MB over that limitation was payable according to the invisible small letters in
advertisement that misled consumers. After carrying out some legal expertise, the lawyers
submitted the case to the UzCC. As a result, the vice-chairman of the Committee issued an official
letter, which stated that the advertising information of Beeline violated the main requirements of
advertising, such as legality, accuracy, reliability and using harmless advertising techniques.
Consequently, the UzCC decided to send a cease and desist order to Beeline [58]. In this case, the
Committee failed to understand the concept of deception by evaluating it with the general
requirements of advertising, and this can cause harm to the other competing mobile operators,
which are foreign investors.
Third, the UzCC misclassifies the deception-related concepts with other non-deception
concepts. For instance, in the following case the Committee misclassifies omission concept by
evaluating it as hidden advertising. In San`at Sehri company case, an organizer provided TV
commercial about a big concert show with 9 famous Uzbek superstars on May 5-6, 2006, in a
concert hall called Turkiston [59]. On the first day of concert, the audience found out that only
three famous singers would participate in the concert. The other 6 famous superstars would be
substituted for other unknown singers. The audience did not expect this because the advertisement
had not provided information about the "strangers". Accordingly, the consumers complained to
the UzCC for compensation of damages from the false advertising. During the hearing proceedings
in the Committee, the company asserted that the advertisement contented the expression "9 Uzbek
famous superstars and other singers", and those "other singers" who consumers recognized as
"unknown", were auxiliary singers in the event of emergency. As a result of examination, the
Committee found that actual advertisement contained information about 9 famous singers by
name, and the information continued with the phrase "and others", which made the consumers to
believe that the other singers were also famous. Surprisingly, the Committee evaluated the
advertisement as a hidden advertisement and imposed an administrative fine to the director of the
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |