The Gray Blog

The European Commission has issued revised antitrust rules that allow luxury goods manufacturers who own less than 30% market share in any particular market to restrict the distribution of their goods through online resellers. The press release issued by the Commission states that the “Regulation allows manufacturers to protect an exclusive distributor from active sales by other distributors, in order to encourage that distributor to invest in the exclusively allocated territory or customer group.”

This new rule is of particular importance to online retailers such as EBay and Amazon. Under the new rules manufacturers could impose “hardcore” restrictions on on-line resellers forcing them to refuse sales in particular markets or to reroute customers to particular resellers. These new rules are valid for 12 years.

The commission has indicated that it will monitor the application of the law for any abuses.

No Responses to “European Commission allows vertical restraints on online sales”

No comments yet

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.