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Abstract

The commodity market is not just about the commodity but largely about how one sells it, which in today’s world is mostly through advertisements. Advertising has been with us in one form of another for the past 5000 years1 . It plays a significant role in today’s economy and its presence in both print and electronic formats is likely to continue. One of the essential functions of advertising has been to persuade potential consumers that a particular product is superior to competing products. In today’s market, they frequently attempt the task not just by saying ‘our product is good’, but by saying ‘our product is better than the others’2– which is the basic concept behind comparative advertising. Comparative advertising is defined as advertising that “identifies the competition for the purpose of claiming superiority or enhancing perceptions of the sponsor’s brand”, as opposed to advertising that promotes one’s product solely on its own merits.3 The comparison may be of a specific attribute of the product, such as price or taste, or it may be a general, allencompassing comparison. This type of advertising, i.e., taking the competitor head-on and comparing the respective products, to show the advertiser’s superiority, is one of the most controversial areas in advertising today. This becomes problematic essentially because advertising is not always truthful. Sometimes it relies on misleading claims and sometimes it engages in deceptive advertising to sell products. This article herein narrates the laws relating to comparative advertising, as they exist in the United Kingdom, the United States and India respectively. By traversing this path, the article attempts to compare these laws. An attempt is also made therein to find out the aptness of these laws and whether they are in parity with the situation in their respective territory and whether they are in need of any change.

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