David: To be honest, a legal question like yours should be asked of your company's high priced lawyers.
But since you asked, I'll offer my opinion as a non-lawyer but as a sometimes involvee in international commerce. 1) A magazine advertisement can be construed as referring a client (reader/subscriber) to a particular product, which may not be CE marked, but they may order it anyway. Is the magazine responsible? I think not, even though they received consideration (ad revenue) from the advertiser. 2) If the user is injured as a result of this third-party stuff your company recommended, you can anticipate being named in the resulting lawsuit (this is a US-centric view, Europeans are less litigious). If your customers are in EU, and you know these things are not EU approved, why would you even think of recommending them? (I know the answer - it's marketing's idea.) Regards, Jack Jacob Z. Schanker, P.E. 65 Crandon Way Rochester, NY 14618 Tel: 585 442 3909 Fax: 585 442 2182 [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Heald" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 10:45 AM Subject: Liability for referral of third party sales > > All, > Has anyone had issues (or prevented them) with legal repsonsibility for referring third party sales into markets for which the third party's products are not approved? I'll explain: My company would like to refer sales of certain peripheral products directly to outside suppliers (and get a 'finder's fee' in the process). The issue came up that what if we refer a sale and collect a finders fee when a 3rd party supplier sells a product into a market in which the product is not approved (i.e. we tell someone that we have an EU customer that wants to buy our widget and their gadget - but their gadget has no CE mark and they ship it anyway and give us a finder's fee). > > Would my company be at all liable for the third party's supplier shipment to a non-approved market? (we did refer the sale and get money for it) I think we're in the clear and it's the third party supplier's responsibility to limit their shipments to only those markets in which they have the required regulatory approvals/certs/etc but I'm throwing this out to the list to get feedback. > > Thanks in advance for any feedback, > -Dave Heald > > > ________________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned for computer viruses. > > > ------------------------------------------- > This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety > Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. > > Visit our web site at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ > > To cancel your subscription, send mail to: > [email protected] > with the single line: > unsubscribe emc-pstc > > For help, send mail to the list administrators: > Ron Pickard: [email protected] > Dave Heald: [email protected] > > For policy questions, send mail to: > Richard Nute: [email protected] > Jim Bacher: [email protected] > > All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: > http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc > > This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
