>>Hi Jordan,
>>
>>Norway is not a member of EU, but we have an agreement with EU, and must follow most of the EU laws. AFAIK it is completely legal for me and my company to buy and sell any brand wherever you want within EU, UNLESS the brand owner in question has done extensive marketing in a specific country. This means that, since MSFT does close to no marketing for VFP, I can buy it wherever I can get the cheapest price provided that the supplier is an approved MSFT dealer. But I am no lawyer, and I may be wrong.
>
>As EU member, we strike some problems. For example RENAULT break contract with their local distributor, made their own company and steal local company dealers. This should be illegal according last changes in competition area regulations, but they pointed to authors right law and that trademark is their ownership and that they will sell cars alone.
>I realy don't know which law have higher priority, those which support competition or those which prottect authors rights, how they define which is valid and which is not.
>But here FBI and customs protect large companies and their trademarks.

I think the case that most companies won't take their case to court, so in practice it's the money that counts. But the EU government takes this very seriously, and in 2000 Volkswagen was fined 102 million euros because they tried to stop Ausrian and German car dealers from buying Volkswagen from Italy where they were subsidised in order to be competitive agaians cheap Fiats. You can read about this case here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/821620.stm. I don't know if this case was appealed, and if so how it ended.