Parallel imports in Uzbekistan: can you stop grey-market goods?

The authorised distributor of a French cosmetics brand in Uzbekistan spent two years and roughly 400,000 USD building the market — advertising, merchandising, training shop staff. Then one spring it found the exact same product on the shelves of three retail chains at 30% below its own wholesale price. This was not counterfeit: real bottles, a real batch, simply brought in around the official channel — someone had bought a wholesale lot in Dubai and shipped it straight here. The distributor came to us with a simple question: "It's my brand, surely I can stop this?" The honest answer is "maybe." Here is why it's "maybe" and not "yes."

Parallel imports are not counterfeits — and that is the whole problem

A parallel ("grey") import is the importation of genuine, lawfully manufactured goods bearing a registered trademark, but without the consent of the trademark owner or its official representative in that country. The key word is genuine. The bottles are real, the batch was produced by the manufacturer itself, the contents match the label.

That is what fundamentally separates grey imports from counterfeits. A counterfeit is a fake: goods carrying someone else's mark with no right to it. Its illegality is obvious and the tools are clear — from a customs seizure to a criminal case. We walk through those step by step in our guide to the Customs IP Register.

Grey goods are different. Nobody faked anything. There is only one question: did the importer have the right to bring genuine goods in without your consent? And the answer turns not on forgery, but on a legal doctrine called "exhaustion of the exclusive right."

Exhaustion of rights: the clause the whole dispute hangs on

The exhaustion principle says something simple: once the rights holder has sold the goods (or consented to the sale), its exclusive right over that particular item is "exhausted" — it can no longer control onward resale. Otherwise any brand owner could forbid the resale of something already bought, which is absurd.

The entire parallel-import dispute comes down to one question: where must that first sale happen for the right to count as exhausted? Three models exist:

• National exhaustion. The right is exhausted only if the goods were first sold inside Uzbekistan with the rights holder's consent. Goods bought in Dubai and brought here without consent do not exhaust the right — so the import can be treated as infringement. This model protects the official distributor.
• International exhaustion. The right is exhausted as soon as the goods are first lawfully sold anywhere in the world. Once the manufacturer sold the batch in Dubai, the right is exhausted globally and the parallel import is lawful. This model protects the importer and the consumer (lower prices).
• Regional exhaustion. A middle option: the right is exhausted within a customs union or region. This is the model the EU uses.

Which model a country chooses decides who wins the dispute. And this is where Uzbekistan's particular situation begins.

Why Uzbekistan has no clear answer

The 2017 amendments to the Law "On Trademarks, Service Marks and Appellations of Origin" finally wrote the exhaustion principle into the text. But the wording stayed ambiguous: it is unclear what the rights holder's consent attaches to — the first sale in the country of origin (the road to international exhaustion) or the placing of goods on the market in Uzbekistan (national exhaustion).

That uncertainty produced a split in practice. Some courts accepted parallel importers' arguments for international exhaustion — that is, treated grey imports as lawful. The antimonopoly regulator and the Ministry of Justice leaned the other way, toward the national model: the unauthorised import of genuine goods under someone else's mark infringes the rights holder's rights. The same law reads two opposite ways depending on which office you walk into.

A 2023 reform complicated the picture further. Until October 2023 the antimonopoly authority handled IP-related unfair competition. After the reform those provisions were removed from competition law, and IP disputes moved to the economic (commercial) courts and to trademark-specific mechanisms. The channel changed; the exhaustion uncertainty did not.

We once ran a matter where two almost identical imports of genuine goods drew opposite findings in different instances: one court saw infringement, the other lawful resale. The conclusion we give every client: do not count on a clean court injunction based on the exhaustion argument. It is a lottery. Build your defence on tools that work regardless of how a court reads the contested provision.

What actually works: the customs register and ex officio

The most reliable lever is not judicial — it is at the border. Recording your trademark in the Customs IP Register held by the State Customs Committee gives you a chokepoint every import must pass through. We covered the procedure in detail in the Customs IP Register guide; here one recently changed detail matters.

Since 2024, following amendments to the Customs Code, customs gained strengthened powers, including an ex officio procedure. This means an inspector may suspend the release of a suspicious consignment for up to 10 working days on their own initiative — even without a complaint from the rights holder. If the mark is recorded, customs must notify the owner within 1 business day. Those ten days are your window to assess the shipment, file a claim and block release.

Why this beats litigation: a customs hold does not require you to win the exhaustion argument. It buys you time and a negotiating position before the goods reach the shelf. Once they have already sold through three chains, as in the story above, any court is only a recovery after the fact. Recording a mark costs roughly 2,000,000 UZS and about a week of document preparation. It is the cheapest insurance in a rights holder's toolkit.

The contract is your second line of defence

The second tool turns an uncertain exhaustion dispute into a clear breach-of-contract dispute. If you have an official distributor or an exclusive importer, a well-drafted agreement does half the court's work for it:

• Exclusive territory. State plainly that only this partner may import and place the goods on the market in Uzbekistan. Any other channel is a breach.
• No channel leakage. Bind your overseas suppliers and distributors in neighbouring countries not to sell to persons who will re-export into Uzbekistan.
• Batch marking. Unique batch codes let you trace which link in the chain leaked goods into the grey channel and pursue exactly that party.
• Contractual penalties. A fixed penalty for each grey-import episode is far easier to recover than open-ended damages.

Control over the contractual chain does not repeal the exhaustion doctrine, but it shifts the dispute to ground where you hold a signed document, not a guess about how a court will read the law. Drafting these agreements and a channel-defence strategy is part of our anti-counterfeiting services.

What it costs the infringer

The third lever is the price for the importer. Under the Law "On Trademarks" the rights holder may claim statutory compensation instead of proving damages — between 20 and 1,000 base calculation units (BCU). The court sets the amount based on the nature of the infringement, the degree of fault and commercial custom. In current prices that is roughly 8 to 400 million UZS (the BCU is revised periodically, so calculate on the rate current at the claim date). The main advantage: you do not have to prove lost profit, which in grey-import cases is almost impossible.

Enforcement is also tightening. Since 2025 criminal liability has applied to serious trademark infringement — fines in the range of 50–150 BCU or restriction of liberty for up to 3 years. This is part of aligning with TRIPS requirements within the WTO accession process. For a serious repeat importer, the prospect of a criminal case changes the whole economics of the grey scheme.

The combination works like this: the mark in the register gives you a border stop; the contract gives you grounds for a claim; compensation and criminal risk make grey imports unprofitable. None of the three tools depends on how a court interprets exhaustion.

What to do right now

• Check whether your mark is recorded in the Customs IP Register. If not, that is the first and cheapest step.
• Pull your distribution agreements and review the exclusive-territory and no-leakage clauses.
• Introduce batch marking so you can trace the source of grey goods.
• Set up market and register monitoring to catch grey imports before they spread across the chains.
• Do not build your strategy around a single court injunction on the exhaustion argument — it may not land.

Frequently asked questions

Are parallel imports legal in Uzbekistan or not? There is no clear answer. Since 2017 the law has not cleanly separated the national and international exhaustion models, so courts and the antimonopoly authority read it differently. In practice this means the outcome of any given dispute is hard to predict, and relying on a court injunction alone is risky.

How does a grey import differ from a counterfeit? A counterfeit is a fake, unlawfully marked with someone else's trademark. A grey import is genuine product, lawfully made by the rights holder, but brought in without the consent of the mark's owner in that country. A fake is simple to stop; grey goods are contested.

Can customs stop genuine goods if they are not fakes? Yes, if the mark is recorded. Since 2024 customs may suspend the release of a suspicious consignment for up to 10 working days ex officio and must notify the rights holder within 1 business day. That gives you time to file a claim.

How much does it cost to record a mark in the Customs IP Register? Roughly 2,000,000 UZS plus about a week of document preparation. Against the losses from a grey channel, it is the cheapest protective measure available.

What compensation can you recover from an importer? Under the Law "On Trademarks," 20 to 1,000 BCU without proving damages. The court fixes the exact figure by the nature of the infringement and the degree of fault.

Does a parallel importer face criminal liability? Serious trademark infringement has carried fines of 50–150 BCU or restriction of liberty for up to 3 years since 2025. A single consignment and a repeat scheme are judged differently, but the risk itself changes the importer's calculations.

Will a distribution contract help if the law is ambiguous? Yes. A well-drafted agreement with an exclusive territory and a no-leakage clause moves the dispute from the uncertain ground of exhaustion to the clear ground of breach of obligation, where you hold a signed document.

Grey imports in Uzbekistan are not a "legal or not" question you can answer in advance. They are a question of preparation: the rights holder who recorded the mark in the customs register, closed the contractual chain and is ready to claim compensation wins — not because the law is on their side, but because they never gave the dispute a chance to reach that ambiguous clause.