Vertical agreements and VBER

28. 4. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

Selective distribution is covered by the EU Vertical Block Exemption Regulation, and purely qualitative systems meeting the Metro criteria fall outside Article 101(1) TFEU. The draft revised VBER, due from 1 June…

12. 4. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

Under the draft revised Vertical Block Exemption Regulation, information exchanges in dual distribution would stay exempt if necessary to improve production or distribution, dropping the earlier proposed 10% market-share cap and listing…

5. 4. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The European Commission has effectively dropped its proposed 10% retail market-share limit on information exchanges in dual distribution from the draft revised Vertical Block Exemption Regulation, replacing it with a necessity-based test…

29. 3. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The draft revised Vertical Block Exemption Regulation would extend the dual-distribution exception from manufacturers to wholesalers and importers, letting more suppliers that compete with their own distributors rely on the block exemption…

22. 3. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The draft revised Vertical Block Exemption Regulation would let suppliers require distributors to roll over active-sales restrictions to their own customers, reversing the current rolling-over prohibition and closing a loophole resellers use…

15. 3. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

It remains unclear whether the draft revised Vertical Guidelines keep the parallel imposition requirement, under which a supplier protecting one exclusive distributor's territory must impose the same active-sales restriction on all its…

8. 3. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The draft revised Vertical Block Exemption Regulation would relax the exclusivity condition for active-sales restrictions, letting a limited number of distributors share exclusivity in a territory or customer group instead of requiring…

1. 3. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The draft revised Vertical Guidelines would replace the current equivalence test for online versus offline sales criteria in selective distribution with a narrower test asking only whether distributors are prevented from effectively…

22. 2. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

Under the EU's current VBER, charging distributors more for products resold online than offline is a hardcore restriction of passive sales, but the revised VBER from 1 June 2022 will allow dual…

15. 2. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

Resale price maintenance remains a hardcore restriction excluded from the EU's VBER and presumed anticompetitive under Article 101 TFEU, with the revised Vertical Guidelines from 1 June 2022 confirming it applies fully…

8. 2. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

The EU's VBER lists five hardcore restrictions in Article 4 - resale price maintenance, territorial and customer restrictions, selective-distribution sales limits, cross-supply and spare-parts restrictions - a list left largely unchanged by…

1. 2. 2022 · Publications and newsletters

Post-term non-compete clauses in distribution agreements are exempted under the EU's VBER only if limited to one year after termination, confined to the distributor's former premises and indispensable to protect the supplier's…