Article 21 states that the advertising agent and the advertising medium shall be held jointly and severally liable. It refers to circumstances where the advertising agent and the advertising medium create, design or disseminate, or publish a misleading advertisement, in spite of the fact that the agent or medium knows or should have known that such an advertisement is misleading. The purpose of the article is to require the advertising industry to filter out false or misleading advertisement as many as practically possible. Thus the Article is applicable only to the extent where the advertising industry has the possibility to control the situation and make the necessary filtering.

 

Since the advertising media industry will only be held jointly and severally liable for damages, without any criminal and administrative liabilities and since the matters of joint and several civil liabilities are within the jurisdiction of the courts, the applicability of Article 21(5) on the advertising agent and advertising media industry will be determined by the courts.