Imperial Tobacco joined BAT and Philip Morris in the fight against plain packaging as it on Tuesday filed a legal challenge against Australia’s new packaging law.

Imperial said its challenge would claim that laws passed last month mandating plain packets for tobacco products from December 2012 breached Australia’s constitution by infringing intellectual property rights.
“The High Court of Australia will now determine claims which include the validity of these unprecedented laws,” Imperial Tobacco Australia manager Melvin Ruigrok said in a statement. “Unchallenged, the Australian government would otherwise be able to simply take the intellectual property of legal entities.”
A spokeswoman for Australia’s High Court said that Imperial's challenge has some similarities to the BAT challenge, but left it open whether they would be heard together. (pi)