New laws on gambling are applicable to marketing promotions on food packaging, law firm Halliwells reports.

Prize draws

One of the biggest changes that the act has introduced from a product promotion perspective is that it is no longer necessary to have a “no purchase necessary” route provided that the price of the product to which the promotion relates has not been increased on account of the promotion. If there is any sort of entry payment required, other than normal postage, phone costs or similar, then a genuine “no purchase necessary” route must still be provided.

 Prize competitions

Promoters running prize competitions must ensure that success depends on the exercise of skill, judgement or knowledge by the participants. Recently difficulties have been encountered when promoters have failed to clear this hurdle and in future questions will have to be harder to ensure that this requirement is met. However, for most purposes failure to clear the skill test will not be a problem for promotional marketing on products as the consequence of not clearing the skill hurdle is that the promotion is seen as a free draw and will be acceptable without the need for a free entry route, so long as the price of the product hasn’t been ‘loaded’ or there is not another payment route.

 Northern Ireland

Promoters and agencies need to be aware that Northern Ireland’s devolved government has not adopted the new legislation and the old law remains in place. As such ensure a “no purchase necessary” entry route should still be offered where prize promotions based on chance are to be offered UK wide (i.e. including Northern Ireland).

Nikki Ferguson is a IP lawyer and Chris Morrison is a regulatory and environmental lawyer at law firm Halliwells