Product Code Database
A grey market or dark market (sometimes confused with the similar term "parallel import") is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorised by the original manufacturer or trademark proprietor. Grey market products (grey goods) are products traded outside the manufacturer's authorised channel.
International efforts to promote free trade, including reduced and harmonised national standards, facilitate this form of arbitrage whenever manufacturers attempt to preserve highly disparate pricing. Because of the nature of grey markets, it is difficult or impossible to track the precise numbers of grey market sales. Grey market goods are often new, but some grey market goods are . A market in used goods is sometimes nicknamed a green market.
The two main types of grey markets are those of imported manufactured goods that would normally be unavailable or more expensive in a certain country and unissued securities that are not yet traded in official markets. Sometimes the term dark market is used to describe secretive, unregulated trading in futures contract, notably crude oil in 2008. This can be considered a third type of "grey market" not intended or explicitly authorised by oil producers.
The import of legally restricted or prohibited items such as prescription drugs or firearms, on the other hand, is considered black market, as is the smuggling of goods into a target country to avoid import duties. A related concept is Rum-running; the smuggling or transport of highly regulated goods, especially alcoholic beverages. The term "bootlegging" is also often applied to the production or distribution of counterfeit or otherwise infringing goods (also black market).
Grey markets sometimes develop for video game consoles and titles whose demand temporarily exceeds their supply causing authorised local suppliers to run out of stock. This happens especially during the Christmas and holiday season. Other popular items, such as , and birth control, can also be affected. In such situations, the grey market price may be considerably higher than the list price, with unscrupulous sellers buying items in bulk for the express purpose of inflating the prices during resale, a practice called scalping. Online auction sites such as eBay have contributed to the emergence of the video-game grey market.
One reason for these regional name variants is trademark issues. A company may not own the rights to a trademark in another country, where that trademark may be owned by an entirely different entity. Because of this, a different name must be used.
These regional name variations may also be used to prevent the sale of bootleg arcade games, including those from Japanese versions.
Although some grey imports are a bargain, some buyers have discovered that their vehicles do not meet local regulations, or that parts and services are difficult to obtain because these cars are different from the versions sold through the new car dealer network.
Many used cars come from Singapore or Japan, and are sold in other countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Russia and New Zealand. Japan and Singapore both have strict laws against older cars. The Japanese Shaken testing regime requires progressively more expensive maintenance, involving the replacement of entire vehicle systems, that are unnecessary for safety, year on year, to devalue older cars and promote new cars on their home market that were available for low prices. This makes these well running cars seem reasonably priced, even after transport expenses. There are very few cars in Japan more than five years old.
New car arbitrage has become an issue in the US as well, especially when the US price is lower in the US than in countries like China.
Beyond cost issues, grey market cars provide consumer access to models never officially released. Before 1987, the Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz G-Class, and Lamborghini Countach, all revolutionary designs, were grey import vehicles in the United States. The grey market provided a clear signal to these manufacturers that the United States had significant demand for these cars, and their present-day US model descendants remain popular. Years later, Nissan similarly decided to sell the Nissan GT-R in North America after seeing how many people were importing older Nissan Skyline. Although Mercedes-Benz was also a beneficiary of the signals to US consumer demand that the grey market provided, their lobbying in Washington succeeded in virtually ending the US grey market in 1988.
In the UK, some Japanese domestic market models fetch a high price because of their performance, novelty or status, assisted by the fact that the Japanese drive on the left, in common with the UK, so vehicles are right hand drive. Popular types include off-road vehicles, people carriers, affordable sports cars like the Mazda MX-5 / Roadster, very high performance sports cars including the rally homologation based cars like the Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, ultra-compact , and limited edition Japanese market designer cars like the Nissan Figaro.
In Japan, due to strict and differing car classifications and emission regulations, or lack of main consumer demand, some international models or certain regional models are not sold in Japanese domestic market. Grey importers are trying to import some of these models into Japan but it is permitted due to lack of restrictions imposed on them, unlike in other countries. Among the grey-imported vehicles in Japan are pickup trucks like Toyota Tundra, Nissan Navara and Subaru BRAT, which are not officially sold in Japan.
also market access to programming restricted by broadcasting deals through spoofing an IP address within a different territory. This is commonly used to access a television series otherwise stuck on an unpopular streaming service and instead access it easier through a service such as Netflix, which may have it in their library within another territory.
In Europe, some satellite TV services are encrypted since they have only been authorised by content suppliers to broadcast films, sporting events and US entertainment programming in a certain country or countries. For example, only residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland may subscribe to Sky UK. In other European countries with large British expatriate populations, such as Spain, Sky is widely available through the grey market. Although Sky discourages the use of its viewing cards outside the UK or Ireland, and has the technology to render them invalid, many people continue to use them.
Parallel importing of "free-to-view" Sky cards from the UK to Ireland is often done so that Irish Sky customers can receive Channel 5 and some of the other channels not generally available via Sky in Ireland because of trademark and other licensing issues. Conversely, Sky viewing cards from Ireland, which allow viewing of Irish terrestrial channels, are imported into the UK. Northern Ireland residents subscribing to Sky can watch RTÉ One and Two and TG4, although not TV3, which carries many of the same programmes as ITV, a lot of the programmes airing before ITV can show them.
It is also becoming increasingly common in the UK for some to use satellite decoder cards from Greece, Norway, Poland or the Arab world to receive satellite TV broadcasting live English football matches from those countries. Alternatively, they may use cards which allow pirate decryption of scrambled signals. Such cards are typically much cheaper than the cards available in the UK from Sky (who charge extra fees for public showing licences). However, Sky has taken civil and criminal action against some who do this. Two cases involving grey cards, originating in 2008 were referred to the European Court of Justice. The suppliers of grey cards and Karen Murphy, the landlady of a pub which showed Premier League matches using a Greek decoder card,Juliane Kokott, Opinion of Advocate Kokott on Cases C‑403/08 and C‑429/08, paragraph 42, delivered on 3 February 2011, accessed on 12 April 2025 won their cases at the European Court of Justice. The judges ruled that right holders cannot license their content on an exclusive territorial basis, as this breaches EU law on competition and free movement of goods and services. However, whilst this ruling allows domestic viewers to subscribe to foreign satellite services, pubs may still need permission from rights holders such as the Premier League to broadcast content. This is because certain elements of the broadcast such as branding are copyrighted.
There followed two High Court judgements on this matter. Mr Justice Kitchin ruled that QC Leisure and other suppliers of foreign satellite systems could carry on with their businesses if they could prevent copyright elements such as branding of football matches from being shown in a public place. The Premier League could pursue prosecutions of licensees who showed branding of matches via foreign satellite systems. Karen Murphy won her case in the High Court following the ruling from the European Court of Justice. The ruling from Justice Stanley Burnton allowed Ms Murphy to shop for the cheapest foreign satellite provider. However, the ruling from Justice Kitchin prevented Ms Murphy from showing matches in her pub via foreign satellite systems because branding is subject to trade mark law. It is no longer illegal though for a customer to purchase a foreign viewing card from an EU country and use it outside the territory.
The driving forces behind a heavily active mobile phone grey market include currency fluctuations, customers demands, manufacturers policies, market-specific features, and price variations. It is not uncommon for grey market traders to introduce a product into a market months in advance of the official launch. This was evident with the launch of the iPhone 4, where international grey market traders bought large quantities at Apple's retail price then shipped to countries where the product was not available, adding a substantial margin to the resale price. The launch of the iPhone 14, which removed the SIM card slot in the United States and was replaced with eSIM technology, but remains elsewhere, including Canada, also created a grey market for a version with a traditional SIM card slot.
Due to regional lockout, video game consoles and their games are often subjected to grey market trade and are chosen as the alternative to Modchip by some gamers. The reasons for this may range from the console being crippled in some markets to that of the desired game not being released for the market the potential consumer of the game is in.
PC code stripping is a process by which boxed PC product is bought in large quantities at cheap rates. Manual labor is then used to open the box, retrieve the activation code from the box and enter the code into a database. The activation code is then sold online as a download key and the physical product is discarded or sold as backup media.
The grey market for photographic equipment and other such electronics is thriving in heavily taxed states like Singapore with dealers importing directly from lower taxed states and selling at lower prices, creating competition against local distributors recognised by the products' manufacturers. "Grey sets", as colloquially called, are often comparable to products purchased from the manufacturer's preferred retailer. camera lens or flash units of parallel imports often only differ by the warranty provided, and since the grey sets were manufactured for another state, photographic equipment manufacturers often offer local warranty, instead of international warranty, which will render grey sets ineligible for warranty claims with the manufacturing.
Because of the nature of local warranties, importers of grey sets usually offer their own warranty schemes to compensate for the manufacturers' refusal of service. Grey sets do not differ particularly from official imports. They look and function identically. In the early days of camera sales during the 1960s and 70s, when lenses had amber coating, the bargain basements for Japanese equipment were Hong Kong and Singapore, through which goods were channeled to European shop windows bypassing the often substantial levy of the official importers. World-market pricing and the Internet have largely eliminated this. Canon gives their hard-selling DSLR cameras names like "Rebel" in the US and "EOS xx0/xx00" outside it, aimed at preventing the competitively priced US-merchandise reaching Europe where sales are slower but achieve a higher profit.
A related concept is off-label use. Drugs are generally authorized for particular uses, but such authorization generally only prohibits the manufacturer from marketing them for other uses; physicians may be permitted to prescribe them for unauthorized, "off-label" uses.
In India, the unofficial grey market trades are prevalent for the initial public offering (IPOs). The people put their money in the unregulated and unofficial grey market before the listing of the IPOs. The promoters of the company, along with the market operators, buy and sell the shares before the listing. This is the easiest way to manipulate the share price before IPO listing.
These books typically contain a disclaimer stating that importation is not permitted. However, the U.S. Supreme Court decisions Quality King v. L'anza (1998) and especially Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2013, involving textbooks imported from Thailand by an eBay seller) protect the importation of lawfully produced copyrighted materials under the first-sale doctrine.
Barron's has said that in 2017 fine Swiss watches were available for up to 40% lower prices from the grey market. The New York Times even criticized the Rolex Daytona calling it "the hottest watch that money can't buy".
StockX has planned to go public since October 2019. As of January 2022, they had not yet done so.
When grey-market products are advertised on Google, eBay or other legitimate web sites, it is possible to petition for removal of any advertisements that violate trademark or copyright laws. This can be done directly, without the involvement of legal professionals. For example, eBay will remove listings of such products even in countries where their purchase and use is not against the law. Manufacturers may refuse to supply distributors and retailers (and with commercial products, customers) that trade in grey market goods. They may also more broadly limit supplies in markets where prices are low. Manufacturers may refuse to honor the warranty of an item purchased from grey market sources, on the grounds that the higher price on the non-grey market reflects a higher level of service even though the manufacturer does of course control their own prices to distributors. Alternatively, they may provide the warranty service only from the manufacturer's subsidiary in the intended country of import, not the diverted third country where the grey-market goods are ultimately sold by the distributor or retailer. This response to the grey market is especially evident in electronics goods. Local laws (or customer demand) concerning distribution and packaging (for example, the language on labels, units of measurement, and nutritional disclosure on foodstuffs) can be brought into play, as can national standards certifications for certain goods.
Manufacturers may give the same item different model numbers in different countries, even though the functions of the item are identical, so that they can identify grey imports. Manufacturers can also use supplier codes to enable similar tracing of grey imports. Parallel market importers often decode the product in order to avoid the identification of the supplier. In the United States, courts have ruled decoding is legal, however manufacturers and brand owners may have rights if they can prove that the decoding has materially altered the product where certain trademarks have been defaced or the decoding has removed the ability of the manufacturer from enforcing quality-control measures. For example, if the decoding defaces the logo of the product or brand or if the batch code is removed preventing the manufacturer from re-calling defective batches.
The development of DVD region codes, and equivalent regional lockout techniques in other media, are examples of technological features designed to limit the flow of goods between national markets, effectively fighting the grey market that would otherwise develop. This enables movie studios and other content creators to charge more for the same product in one market than in another, or alternatively withhold the product from some markets for a particular time.
Correspondingly, the grey market has found support from most ideological tendencies. Anarchism opponents of class discrimination argue that private property in general leads to the oppression of much of society and are therefore against the very idea of intellectual property, which forms the basis of arguments against the grey market. Capitalism of the corporation, in agreement, assert that the enforcement of intellectual property can lead to a 'lessening of composing effort'.
The grey market has been a constant source of litigation and appeals in the United States. The same fundamental question arises under patent law and copyright law, namely whether or not a good sold abroad lawfully is still protected by United States intellectual property law for the purposes of resale. When purchased domestically, a copyrighted good may be resold by the purchaser under the first-sale doctrine contained at . Similarly, a patented good may be re-sold under the patent exhaustion doctrine. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court largely discussed the legality of the grey market when it decided Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. where it held that a sale abroad of a copyrighted good triggers the first sale doctrine. The decision is largely understood to apply to patented goods as well.
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