Legal Articles & Insights

Canada: A brand may require annual marketing spend without clarifying whether it must be spent, reimbursed, pooled or deducted from rebates. Disputes then arise over unused balances, invoices and ownership of advertising assets.

Canada: May a distributor sell competing products during the relationship or after exit? For how long, where, and to which customers? Such restrictions protect brands but may be limited by mandatory local law and competition rules.

Canada: Websites, marketplaces, social commerce and livestreaming blur territory. A customer may live in the distributor’s region but buy from the brand’s site after clicking distributor-funded advertising. Attribution must be defined before disput

Canada: A common error after payment default is continuing to ship while waiting for the distributor’s cash flow to improve, increasing exposure. Sudden suspension can also damage end-customer projects. Escalation should reflect contract rights, cr

Canada: A relationship ends, but the former distributor still appears “official” online. Brands fear consumer confusion; distributors fear losing years of traffic and account value. The root problem is poor drafting around license termination and d

Canada: Brands want price consistency while distributors want local discount flexibility. This is not only a contract issue; competition law can matter, especially around minimum resale prices, punitive enforcement or coordination among resellers.

Canada: A demand letter is not better because it sounds harsher. Its value is clarity on facts, contract, amount, deadline and credible next steps. Aggressive wording without quantified claims and evidence reduces leverage.

Canada: A brand may demand targets while being unable to supply, or may allocate popular SKUs to DTC and other regions. A target miss can therefore reflect both distributor performance and brand supply failure.

Canada: MOQs and sales targets often serve three purposes: forecasting supply, measuring performance and preserving exclusivity. The contract may fail to say whether a miss causes damages, loss of exclusivity, cure or non-renewal.

Canada: Many disputes erupt at exit rather than during the relationship. A termination email is easy; resolving inventory, customers, trademarks, domains, warranties, deposits, receivables and in-transit orders is not.

Canada: A distributor needs trademarks to sell, but permission to sell does not automatically authorize domains, “official” social accounts, co-branding, local registrations or placing the logo on unrelated products. Ambiguity becomes acute at term

Canada: Consumers see one brand, but behind it may be a brand owner, manufacturer, importer, distributor and service company. Parts, labor, refunds and legacy orders must be allocated clearly or after-sales costs can consume channel margins.