A Practioner Guide To The Unfair Competition Law In Jordan

Abstract

Until the year 2000, there was no specific statute enacted in Jordan that regulates unfair competition. In the year 2000, the Jordanian Unfair Competition Law No. 15 of 2000 was enacted. The Law deals with the issue of unfair competition in a very generic way. In addition to the Jordanian Unfair Competition Law, the principal statutory source of protection is implemented through the general rules and principles of civil law, particularly, tort law and injurious acts. Although the Jordanian Unfair Competition Law purports to implement a general legal regime on unfair competition, it includes very little in terms of substantive or procedural protection of unfair competition. Presently, the Jordanian legal system provides only very limited protection which is not adequate to accommodate unfair competition cases. Therefore, statutory changes are needed. 1.1. INTRODUCTION Little is known about Arab and Islamic law, including Jordanian law. It is rather a realistic approach that business- men should know about unfair competition law of other countries and that they know about effectiveness, fairness, speed and cost of judicial procedures abroad (Carroll 2001). As far as the author is aware, the issue of unfair competition in Arab countries, including Jordan, has not been researched before from technical and legal standpoints since unfair competition is a newly developed area. This Article repre- sents a first attempt to examine the issues arising in this dif- ficult and important subject. Therefore, this article will ex- amine the suitability of the Jordanian legal system in provid- ing sufficient protection of unfair competition. The article concludes that there are serious obstacles in terms of sub- stantive and procedural protection of unfair competition in Jordan and provides some recommendations in this regard. In order to examine this issue, this article is divided into two sections. First, the scope of application of unfair compe- tition under the Jordanian law. Second, the legal Protection of unfair competition in Jordan. Finally, the conclusion of the article will relate the finding to each other in a coherent way and suggests practical solutions to some pitfalls of the current law. Merchants are indoctrinated for competition which is essential and perhaps inevitable in all commercial fields in order to attract customers. However, it has been argued that although every competitor who wins customers from another justifiably damages the business of the losing competitor, that damage is merely damnum absque injuria. (Knight 1978) In other words, the justified diminution, injury, even