SYDNEY – The backlash continues against Australia’s plain packaging regulations, the Washington Post reports. Since Jan. 1, all cigarette packages sold in Australia have had the logos and much of the branding replaced with graphic images and warnings. The brand names appear in a uniform typeface on the bottom of the package.

“Much of this industry is about image. It is not about tobacco,” said Robert Stumberg, a Georgetown University law professor who follows tobacco rules and legalities around the world. Australia’s regulation, he says, “gets to the heart of their ability to market their products.”

Tobacco companies that do business in Australia are fighting back. The firms have partnered with some countries, such as Honduras and Indonesia, which are being impacted economically by the changes. Philip Morris Asia’s Hong Kong division filed a trade case that encapsulated the stakes: No branding means that Philip Morris products will not be readily distinguishable to the consumer from the products of its competitors…. [Philip Morris] will be reduced to the manufacturer of an effectively undifferentiated commodity.”

The World Trade Organization in Geneva is the site of another lawsuit, one that will pit a country’s health rules against its responsibility outlined by international trade agreements. Stumberg and other analysts posit that the case will likely be decided on whether plain packaging lowers tobacco usage or changes consumer buying patterns of tobacco products.

What the case has done so far is delay Britain and New Zealand’s implementation of new packaging rules to see what happens in Australia. The United States has had its new packaging regulations halted by litigation, too, with the proposals languishing at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for now.