Court of Justice of the European Communities, C-379/97
The condition of artificial partitioning of the markets between Member States, as laid down in the judgments in Case 102/77 Hoffmann-La Roche v Centrafarm [1978] ECR 1139 and in Joined Cases C-427/93, C-429/93 and C-436/93 Bristol-Myers Squibb and Others v Paranova [1996] ECR I-3457, means that it is necessary, in order to determine whether the proprietor of a trade mark may, under national law, prevent a parallel importer of pharmaceutical products from replacing the trade mark used in the Member State of export by that which the proprietor uses in the Member State of import, to assess whether the circumstances prevailing at the time of marketing in the Member State of import make it objectively necessary to replace the original trade mark by that used in the Member State of import in order that the product in question may be marketed in that State by the parallel importer.
