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Antitrust-for-Kids-300x143

Author:  Molly Donovan

Mr. Potter grows the best pumpkins in town. They’re big and round, perfect for carving, and specially treated with a patented spray that keeps Potter pumpkins squirrel-free for weeks. Genius!

Naturally, all the kids in town buy their Halloween pumpkins from Mr. Potter’s farmstand. They’re a bit more expensive than the competition’s pumpkins, but the price tag is worth the pumpkin perfection.

One thing the kids don’t buy at Mr. Potter’s farmstand: apple cider donuts. Everyone knows that Potter skimps on the cinnamon and sugar and the donuts are too dry besides. The other donuts available in town are loads better.

Seeing that his donuts were mostly going to waste, Mr. Potter could have exited the donut business altogether, but he considered himself a better business person than that. So, here’s what Mr. Potter came up with: no donuts, no pumpkins.

Eeek! Scary.

Mr. Potter made a sign reading:

One pumpkin + ½ dozen donuts = $12. Pumpkins NOT sold separately.

Mr. Potter felt this was perfectly fair—he should be rewarded for his ingenuity and his climb to the top of the local pumpkin market even if his customers felt a bit coerced to buy his donuts.

And the kids did feel coerced—having no choice but to swallow the undesirable donuts to get the pumpkins they needed for Halloween carving.

The donut competitors in town were equally mad. Mr. Potter’s scheme caused their sales to drop off dramatically, practically excluding them from the donut market, at least during the month of October.

But it is what it is, right?

Wrong. Fortunately for everyone (except Mr. Potter), Mikey’s mom happened to be an antitrust lawyer. (Mikey, age 4, was a connoisseur of both donuts and pumpkins, and was understandably very upset over the whole thing.)

When Mikey’s mom learned of Mr. Potter’s Halloween trick she said: this is an antitrust violation called tying!

Tying can run afoul of state and federal antitrust laws. Generally, tying is where a seller makes the sale of one product (or service) contingent on the sale of another product (or service)—leaving the consumer with no choice but to buy both. In tying analyses, most courts look at whether the seller has appreciable economic power in the tying product (pumpkins) to unfairly restrain competition in the tied product (donuts).

Here’s what happened next. Mikey’s mom approached Mr. Potter—”Look,” she said. “We want your pumpkins, but not your donuts. Don’t you know this is an antitrust violation? Your donut tie-in is anticompetitive.”

Mr. Potter – clever as he is – responded, “I’m simply making my donuts more competitive. My competition is free to sell pumpkins and donuts together, just as I’m doing. And, I have no real market power for pumpkins anyway when considering the entire county’s many pumpkin patches (beyond just our small town). Plus, my supposed tie has no effects beyond the month of October anyway—no harm, no foul. I’ll take the risk.”

But after giving it more thought, even if he could win a lawsuit, Mr. Potter did not want to invite an expensive and burdensome antitrust litigation. So as most antitrust disputes go, the matter was settled.  Potter agreed to the following: Potter pumpkins sold at wholesale to all local donut shops. The town’s best apple cider donuts sold wholesale to Mr. Potter. No ties, no tricks. The result: Halloween treats for all sold at competitive prices, and everyone lived happily ever after. Until the next Halloween anyway…

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Robinson-Patman-FTC-300x203

Author: Steven Cernak

Recently, FTC Commissioner Bedoya made one of his first speeches and called for a “return to fairness” when enforcing the antitrust laws. In particular, he called for renewed enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act. This speech is just the latest reason why businesses need to prepare for a new antitrust landscape. But Commissioner Bedoya and anyone else calling for drastic basic changes in antitrust enforcement need to be prepared to patiently work for such change with a skeptical judiciary.

In the speech, Bedoya argued that all the antitrust statutes were passed with the intention of improving the “fairness” of markets, not necessarily their “efficiency,” as the laws have come to be interpreted. Therefore, he wants the FTC to focus the interpretation of all the antitrust statutes on fairness, not efficiency, which he claims to be unambiguous: “People may not know what is efficient — but they know what’s fair.” Specifically, Bedoya called for a rejuvenated enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act and its prohibitions on various types of discriminations, usually against smaller competitors.

On Bedoya’s Robinson-Patman point in particular, please allow me a short “I told you so.” In a prior post, I explained that Robinson-Patman was forgotten but not gone, still affecting negotiations and leading to a few private suits each year. I have insisted on teaching my Antitrust students about the basics of the law, warning them that it is still alive and was unlikely to ever be repealed. If the FTC were to begin actively enforcing the statute after a couple decades, all that knowledge will come in handy once again for many more lawyers.

More generally, it is not clear that interpretation of antitrust law would need to jettison “efficiency” or consumer welfare and move to “fairness” to reach a different result in some of the anecdotes covered in Bedoya’s speech. At least some of the matters might have come out differently with a longer-term view of competition and consumer welfare. In my view — a view that I know Comm. Bedoya does not share — such a standard would be less ambiguous than trying to figure out what “fairness” requires in any situation.

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MAP-Policies-and-Antitrust-300x200

Author: Jarod Bona

We see many antitrust issues in the distribution world—and from all business perspectives: supplier, wholesale distributor, authorized retailer, and unauthorized retailer, among others. And at the retail level, we hear from internet and brick-and-mortar stores and consumers.

The most common distribution issues that come up are resale-price-maintenance (both as an agreement and as a Colgate policy), terminated distributors/retailers, and Minimum Advertised Pricing Policies or MAP polies.

Today, we will talk about MAP Policies and how they relate to the antitrust laws.

What is a Minimum Advertised Price Policy (more commonly known as a MAP policy)?

A MAP policy is one in which a supplier or manufacturer limits the ability of their distributors to advertise prices below a certain level. Unlike a resale-price-maintenance agreement, a MAP policy does not prohibit a retailer from actually selling below any minimum price.

In a resale price maintenance policy or agreement, by contrast, the manufacturer doesn’t allow distributors to sell the products below a certain price.

As part of a “carrot” for following MAP policies, manufacturers often pair the policy with cooperative advertising funds or other benefits for the retailer.

Typical targets of MAP policies are online retailers and competition focused on low prices. These policies also do not typically restrict in-store advertising. The manufacturers that employ MAP policies often emphasize branding in their corporate strategy or have luxury products and fear that low advertised prices for those products will make them seem less luxurious. But these policies exist in many different industries and aren’t limited to luxury brands.

In any event, MAP policies are accelerating in the marketplace. Indeed, brick and mortar retailers that fear “showrooming,” will often pressure manufacturers to implement either vertical pricing restrictions or MAP policies. Not surprisingly, the impetus to implement and enforce MAP policies often come from established retailers that want to limit price competition.

We hear many questions about MAP policies, from both those that want to implement them and those that are subject to them.

Do MAP Policies Violate the Antitrust Laws?

MAP policies don’t—absent further context—violate the antitrust laws by themselves. But, depending upon how a manufacturer structures and implements them, MAP policies could violate either state or federal antitrust law. So the answer to the question of this heading is the unsatisfying “maybe.”

We can, however, add further context to better understand the level of risk for particular MAP policies.

There is some case law analyzing MAP policies, but it is limited, so if you play in this sandbox, you can’t prepare for any one approach. I had considered going through the cases here, but I think that has limited utility.  The fact is that there isn’t a strong consensus on how courts should treat MAP policies themselves. So the best tactic is to understand the core competition issues and make your risk assessments from that.

Because of the limited case law, you should consider, as we do, that there will be a greater variance in expected court decisions about MAP policies, which creates additional risk. This may particularly be the case at the state level because state judges have little experience with antitrust.

In any event, you will need an antitrust attorney to help you through this, so the best I can do here for you to is to help you spot the issues so you can understand if you are moving in the right direction.

If you are familiar with resale price maintenance or Colgate policies, you will notice a lot of overlap with MAP policy issues. But there are important differences.

A minimum advertised price policy is not strictly a limit on pricing. From a competitive standpoint, that helps, but not necessarily a lot. The reality is that a MAP policy can be—for practical reasons—a significant hurdle for online distributors to compete on price for the restricted product. That is, for online retailers, sometimes the MAP policy price is the effective minimum price.

Resale Price Maintenance

Before we go further, let’s review a little bit. A resale price maintenance agreement is a deal between a manufacturer and some sort of distributor (including a retailer that sells to the end user) that the distributor will not sell the product for less than a set price. Up until the US Supreme Court decided Leegin in 2007, these types of agreements were per se illegal under the federal antitrust laws.

Resale price maintenance agreements are no longer per se federal antitrust violations, but several states, including California, New York, and Maryland may consider them per se antitrust violations under state law, so most national manufacturers avoid the risk and implement a unilateral Colgate policy instead.

Under federal law, courts now usually analyze resale-price-maintenance agreements under the antitrust rule of reason. Some misunderstand that this means they are necessarily legal under federal law, but that isn’t correct. The consequence of the US Supreme Court’s Leegin decision is that under federal law, challengers to Resale Price Maintenance policies must now face the the more difficult rule of reason standard instead of the per se standard.

Colgate Policies

Colgate policies are named after a 1919 Supreme Court decision that held that it is not a federal antitrust violation for a manufacturer to unilaterally announce in advance the prices at which it will allow its product to be resold, then refuse to deal with any distributors that violate that policy. You can read our article about Colgate policies here.

The bottom line with Colgate is that in most situations the federal antitrust laws do not forbid one company from unilaterally refusing to deal with another. There are, of course, exceptions, so don’t rely on this point without consulting an antitrust lawyer. And a refusal to deal with a competitor is different than a refusal to supply a customer in retaliation for dealing with a competitor. But that is starting to send us into an entirely different doctrine, so I will stop there.

Back to MAP Policies and Antitrust

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Altria-Antitrust-Merger-FTC-300x200

Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez

The FTC’s challenge of Altria Group’s proposed minority investment in JUUL Labs, Inc. (JLI) in April 2020 generated attention in both the mainstream media and the competition law press. Press coverage since that time has hit the latest developments but often missed the important issues this challenge raises: When can parties reach an anticompetitive agreement before they sign their official merger documents? Non-compete agreements have been pilloried lately, but are they anticompetitive even in a partial merger situation like this one?

This summary should help you prepare for the September 12 oral arguments in front of the Commissioners. You can read Steve Cernak’s more detailed article on these issues for the Washington Legal Foundation here.

The Parties and the Transaction

Altria, together with its subsidiaries, is the largest and one of the oldest cigarette companies in the U.S. In addition to its other products, it also sold e-cigarettes during the relevant period. JLI, is a smaller, newer company focused only on e-cigarettes.

As with most antitrust matters, especially merger investigations, market definition was contentious. Generally, e-cigarettes are electronic devices that aerosolize nicotine-containing liquid using heat generated by a battery as the user puffs. Open system e-cigarettes contain a reservoir that a consumer can refill with their choice of a nicotine-containing liquid. Closed system e-cigarettes have a container that already contains that liquid. Closed systems include cig-a-likes, which mimic the shape and look of a traditional cigarette, as well as pod products that have various shapes, including a shape like a USB thumb drive.

The e-cigarette category began growing rapidly about ten years ago. A few companies offered different options. Altria offered cig-a-like products and then pod products, but JLI offered only pod products. At the time of the challenged transaction, pods were the dominant choice of consumers, with JLI’s product the market leader.

While sales of pods, especially JLI’s pods, grew strongly at the end of 2017, Altria was only selling cig-a-likes and their sales fell. For regulatory reasons, Altria sought to purchase an existing pod product because it couldn’t develop its own product in a reasonable timeframe. In late 2017, it licensed the rights to a Chinese pod product and rushed it to market in early 2018.

Altria then approached JLI in early 2018 about an acquisition. By the end of July, the up-and-down negotiations centered around a multi-billion-dollar investment by Altria in exchange for a minority interest in JLI, possibly a non-voting interest convertible to voting after antitrust clearance. (An acquisition of non-voting securities does not require Hart-Scott-Rodino approval; conversion of such securities does.) At this point, the parties were far from reaching a deal, but began to discuss two other items that would lead to the FTC’s challenge of the eventual transaction.

The ironic first issue was how the parties could obtain antitrust clearance for the entire transaction. The parties’ term sheet described cooperation with the FTC and agreement to any “concessionary requirements of the FTC” related to Altria’s e-cigarette business. That is, the parties agreed that Altria would “divest (or if divestiture is not reasonably practicable, contribute at no cost to [JLI] and if such contribution is not reasonably practicable, then cease to operate” Altria’s e-cigarette business. JLI did not want to compete with Altria because Altria, as a major JLI shareholder, would have access to important JLI information. JLI’s executives later testified that they expected the FTC to oversee this process.

Second, in exchange for regulatory aid, Altria would agree to not compete with JLI’s e-cigarette products. Again, JLI didn’t want Altria’s to access sensitive JLI information when performing these services would allow Altria to improve its current e-cigarette products (before divestiture) or develop better new ones.

While negotiating over financial considerations and Altria’s voting rights, the parties continued to refine these two items. In later term sheets, the requirement that Altria “cease to operate” its e-cigarette assets disappeared while the requirement that Altria either contribute those assets to JLI or divest them remained.

Negotiations broke down in early September, but improved in October as Altria came around to terms much closer to JLI’s proposals. In early December, Altria announced that it was pulling its remaining e-cigarette products from the market, allegedly to conserve costs for product development or to invest in JLI. The parties finally reached an agreement later in December.  Altria then ceased its other e-cigarette development efforts.

The Challenge and Initial Decision

On April 20, 2020, the FTC issued a two-count administrative complaint against the parties. Count I alleged an unreasonable agreement by which Altria agreed not to compete with JLI in the e-cigarette market “now or in the future” in exchange for the ownership interest in JLI. Specifically, that agreement took the form of the non-compete provisions of the written agreement as well as an agreement to exit the market reached during negotiations as a “condition for any deal.” Count II alleged that the transaction, including the agreed upon market exit by Altria and the written non-compete provisions, violated Clayton Act Section 7’s prohibition of mergers that “substantially lessen competition” in the relevant market.

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Toys R Us Antitrust Conspiracy

Author: Jarod Bona

Like life, sometimes antitrust conspiracies are complicated. Not everything always fits into a neat little package. An articulate soundbite or an attractive infograph isn’t necessarily enough to explain the reality of what is going on.

The paradigm example of an antitrust conspiracy is the smoke-filled room of competitors with their evil laughs deciding what prices their customers are going to pay or how they are going to divide up the customers. This is a horizontal conspiracy and is a per se violation of the antitrust laws.

Another, less dramatic, part of antitrust law involves manufacturers, distributors, and retailers and the prices they set and the deals they make. This usually relates to vertical agreements and typically invites the more-detailed rule-of-reason analysis by courts. One example of this type of an agreement is a resale-price-maintenance agreement.

But sometimes a conspiracy will include a mix of parties at different levels of the distribution chain. In other words, the overall agreement or conspiracy may include both horizontal (competitor) relationships and vertical relationships. In these circumstances, everyone in the conspiracy—even those that are not conspiring with any competitors—could be liable for a per se antitrust violation.

As the Ninth Circuit explained in In re Musical Instruments and Equipment Antitrust Violation, “One conspiracy can involve both direct competitors and actors up and down the supply chain, and hence consist of both horizontal and vertical agreements.” (1192). One such hybrid form of conspiracy (there are others) is sometimes called a “hub-and-spoke” conspiracy.

In a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, a hub (which is often a dominant retailer or purchaser) will have identical or similar agreements with several spokes, which are often manufacturers or suppliers. By itself, this is merely a series of vertical agreements, which would be subject to the rule of reason.

But when each of the manufacturers agree among each other to enter the agreements with the hub (the retailer), the several sets of vertical agreements may develop into a single per se antitrust violation. To complete the hub-and-spoke analogy, the retailer is the hub, the manufacturers are the spokes and the agreement among the manufacturers is the wheel that forms around the spokes.

In many instances, the impetus of a hub-and-spoke antitrust conspiracy is a powerful retailer that wants to knock out other retail competition. In the internet age, you might see this with a strong brick-and-mortar retailer that wants to protect its market power from e-commerce competitors.

The powerful retailer knows that the several manufacturers need the volume the retailer can deliver, so it has some market power over these retailers. With market power—which translates to negotiating power—you can ask for stuff. Usually what you ask for is better pricing, terms, etc.

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Golf-TRO-Antitrust-PGA-300x180

Author: Luke Hasskamp

Two days before the FedEx Cup Playoffs—a federal court in San Francisco denied three players’ requests for an order allowing them to participate in the marquee event. Those three players—Talor Good, Hudson Swafford, and Matt Jones—had asked the court to immediately enjoin their recent suspensions, handed down by the PGA Tour, but District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman denied the request, holding the players did not meet their legal and evidentiary burden to show that they would be “irreparably harmed” if barred from the sport’s end-of-season playoff series.

By way of background, the PGA has banned from PGA Tour events any player who chooses to participate in events held by rival upstart league LIV Golf.

The ban includes the FedEx Cup Playoffs—a three-tournament series to conclude the PGA Tour’s season. The top 125 tour players are eligible to participate in the playoffs, which represent a significant accomplishment and “gateway” for players. Not only is lots of money at stake in the playoffs themselves, but there are important implications for a player’s future career. After the playoffs, the top 30 players qualify for next year’s Tour Championship and all four Major Championships, while the top 70 players qualify for all Tour events.

Only three of the 11 plaintiffs in the PGA Tour lawsuit—Gooch, Swafford, and Jones—sought the temporary injunction (called a “TRO”) because these three would have otherwise qualified for the FedEx Cup Playoffs but for their suspensions. Indeed, when the players launched the lawsuit, Gooch was ranked 20th, Jones was 62nd, and Swafford was 63rd, all comfortably within required standings.

In considering a request for a TRO, courts generally consider four elements: (1) whether the players are likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the players are likely to suffer irreparable harm without injunctive relief; (3) whether the balance of equities tip in the players’ favor; and (4) whether the injunction is in the public interest. The players requesting the TRO needed to establish all four elements to be entitled to the relief.

In general, TROs are hard to get because courts are typically reluctant to grant quick, injunctive relief on a limited evidentiary record. And as to irreparable harm in particular, a loss of money by itself is not considered irreparable harm, meaning if money damages could make a party whole, injunctive relief is not appropriate.

Here, after a hearing lasting more than two hours, featuring extensive argument by attorneys for the players and the PGA Tour, the court found that the players failed to show that they would suffer irreparable harm without immediate injunctive relief.

Although Judge Freeman agreed that the FedEx Cup Playoffs were important, marquee events, she cited, on the other hand, the substantial money that the players were making as part of their contracts with LIV Golf, plus the fact that the players’ contracts with LIV Golf specifically contemplated they would lose significant money if they had to miss out on the FedEx Cup playoffs (and other PGA Tour events). The players understood that risk, and, indeed, it was part of their negotiations with LIV Golf—allowing them (arguably) to extract more money from LIV Golf because of the possibility of a PGA ban. Judge Freeman also noted that the players would make significantly more money as part of the LIV Golf series than they might make in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Thus, she could not see how the players would suffer irreparable harm.

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Antitrust-for-Kids-300x143

Authors:  Molly Donovan & Luke Hasskamp

Liv is 8. She just moved to town from out of state and has 3 new neighbor friends Paul, Greg and Adam (“PGA”). The PGA kids seem very nice and well mannered. They wear pastels. And the coolest thing about them: they have a mini-golf course they built in their backyard years ago. It is touted as the best and most exclusive place for kids to play golf and rightly so. All the best mini golfers play there and only there. Frankly, there is no real competition for mini golf in the county.

Even though Liv is new to town, she thinks she has the chops to build a mini-golf course that rivals her neighbors’. Her house is bigger, her backyard is bigger, her parents will buy better equipment, and Liv is going to award the winner of each round a very fancy prize. Kids are thrilled—and one by one, even the best mini golfers start trying Liv’s course.

PGA is not happy. Stunned that Liv would challenge their longstanding position as the best and only course in town, they unilaterally announce that any kid who chooses to play in Liv’s yard will be banned from their original and still most popular and reputable course. Players must choose: one course or the other, but not both.

(The antitrust lawyer is growing concerned. This sounds like a monopolist trying to bully an emerging competitor by cutting off access to customers. What’s worse, Paul and Greg might be depriving kids of meaningful choice when it comes to mini golf.)

And for sure, the kids are upset, but they’re also a bit confused. On the one hand, any business owner has the right to choose with whom they will deal, right? On the other hand, PGA’s decision to punish kids who want to play at Liv’s every once in a while seems wrong.

The kids call their antitrust lawyer, and here’s what she says: you all should file a class action on behalf of every kid in town who wants to play at both courses and have a real choice when it comes to mini golf competition. The PGA contingent is not competing on the merits, that is, they are not getting mini golfers to come to their course by making it better. Instead, they are monopolists who are using their dominance unfairly to box out a nascent competitor. I’ll represent you, although I’m not sure what your monetary damages are. We could try to get an injunction but I’ll need a retainer for that.

Unable to raise enough funds for the retainer, the kids simply call up PGA demanding that their ban be ceased or else nobody will sit with them at lunch or play with them at recess. That did the trick and the ban was called off immediately. Now kids can play at both mini golf courses!

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Colgate Doctrine

Author: Jarod Bona

As an antitrust boutique law firm, we receive a varied assortment of antitrust-related questions. One of the most common topics involves resale-price maintenance.

That is, people want to know when it is okay for suppliers or manufacturers to dictate or participate in price-setting by downstream retailers or distributors.

I think that resale-price maintenance creates so many questions for two reasons: First, it is something that a large number of companies must consider, whether they are customers, suppliers, or retailers. Second, the law is confusing, muddled, and sometimes contradictory (especially between and among state and federal antitrust laws).

If you want background on resale-price maintenance, you might also review:

Here, we will discuss alternatives to resale-price maintenance agreements that may achieve similar objectives for manufacturers or suppliers.

The first and most common alternative utilizes what is called the Colgate doctrine.

The Colgate doctrine arises out of a 1919 Supreme Court decision that held that the Sherman Act does not prevent a manufacturer from announcing in advance the prices at which its goods may be resold and then refusing to deal with distributors and retailers that do not respect those prices.

Businesses (with some exceptions) have no general antitrust-law obligation to do business with any particular company and can thus unilaterally terminate distributors without antitrust consequences. Before you rely on this, however, you should definitely consult an antitrust attorney, as the antitrust laws create several important exceptions, including refusal to deal, refusal to supply, and overall monopolization limitations.

Both federal and state antitrust law focuses on the agreement aspect of resale-price maintenance agreements. So if a company unilaterally announces minimum prices at which resellers must sell its products or face termination, the company is not, strictly speaking, entering an agreement.

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Yang Yang

Author: Yang Yang.

Ms. Yang is an Antitrust Partner at Fairsky Law Firm, which has a New York office. She is also a lecturer and researcher at China University of Political Science and Law. She authored a treatise on China Merger Control and is a member of the expert advisory team for Amendments to China Anti-Monopoly Law (with a total number of 8 members). Indeed, she leads the drafting of an expert report on suggested amendments to China Merger Control regime, Chapter 4 of Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law. She is also a frequent contributor to the Antitrust Report of LexisNexis and Competition Policy International (Asia Column and Asia Chronicle).

On June 24, 2022, the Chinese Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed amendments to the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law, which will come into force on August 1, 2022. These amendments have been the first ones since the first adoption of Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law in 2008.

They cover the following topics: (i) antitrust investigations by the Chinese Antirust Bureau under the SAMR, (ii) merger control review by the Chinese Antitrust Bureau under the SAMR, and (iii) civil litigation or private actions seeking damages or claiming invalidations of contractual provisions based on a violation of Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law. These amendments mark significant changes to China’s antitrust regime.

You might also enjoy the following articles that I’ve authored on The Antitrust Attorney Blog:

Antitrust Merger Control in China: Notifiable Transactions under the People’s Republic of China Anti-Monopoly Law

Draft Amendment to Chinese Antitrust Law Calls for Further Clarifications

Administrative Enforcement by Chinese Antitrust Bureau

With regard to antitrust investigations by Chinese Antirust Bureau under the SAMR, the changes primarily relate to (a) vertical agreements––i.e., RPM; (b) hub-and-spoke agreements, and (c) to the abuse of dominance by internet/technology companies.

Vertical Agreements

These amendments introduce a new “safe harbor” rule for vertical agreements based on the market share of investigated parties in their relevant markets. They now supply more detailed guidance on relevant-market definition, including specific precedents for certain industries. This guidance reduces uncertainty for the investigated parties.

Hub-and-Spoke Agreements

Hub-and-spoke agreements involve manufactures and distributors not entering directly into Resale Price Maintenance provisions (RPM), but rather holding meetings to facilitate horizontal agreements. These fall within the scope of prohibited horizontal agreements in Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law.

For any investigation relating to horizontal or vertical agreements, there is also a new issue of whether any party to such agreements has hosted meetings, organized exchanges of information, or provided substantial facilitation. This also calls for more future guidance from the regulators.

Abusive Conduct by Technology Companies

For internet companies, the provision on prohibiting abusive conduct by algorithms or platform policies is not new. Algorithms and platform policies are commonly used by internet companies. But this new provision may indicate a potential priority from law enforcement. This seems to be consistent with merger control rules and the Chinese Antitrust Bureau’s priority relating to markets impacting the national economy and people’s daily lives, which includes areas of public facilities, pharmaceutical manufacturers and internet platforms.

Merger Control

In the merger control realm, there are three main changes: (i) notification of voluntary transactions, (ii) the introduction of a “Stop the Clock” mechanism, and (iii) a new merger review process by categories and levels. These changes can cause the following uncertainties in practice and may require more detailed guidance.

Notification of Voluntary Transactions

Under this new provision the Chinese Antitrust Bureau has the power to require parties to notify transactions before they are implemented if there is evidence of potential anticompetitive effects. There is no mandatory obligation, however, to notify transactions that do not trigger the relevant merger thresholds before their implementation.

But, despite the new law, current rules do encourage voluntary transactions involving, for example, active pharmaceutical ingredients. These changes create uncertainty on whether the authority has any power to reverse such transactions or impose remedies after their implementation.

In addition, under the new law, the authority must first require the parties to notify the transaction. If the parties do not comply with the notification request, the authority will initiate an official investigation. This process allows the parties to provide evidence and prove that the transaction does not have anticompetitive effects. The authority then has the power to approve (with or without remedies), or prohibit the transaction.

“Stop the Clock” Provision

The new “Stop the Clock” provision grants the authority more time to review the transaction if the notifying parties fail to provide documents on time. At the same time, the notifying parties will now have more time to respond to the authority and to other parties’ concerns.  But under the current law and rules, the authority usually requires the parties to withdraw and refile a notification if the review process has reached the 180-day deadline. Therefore, the new law may restrain the Chinese Antitrust Bureau from extending an investigation longer than 180 days. We will have to see what happens.

New Merger Review Process by Categories and Levels

Finally, the new merger review process by categories and levels calls for more detailed rules on implementation and policies and creates uncertainty as to whether some industries will have higher scrutiny than others.

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