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Advantages Of Anti-Competitive Agreement

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CHAPTER IV

ANTI-COMPETITIVE AGREEMNENT

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

While doing business in India, parties are prohibited from executing anti-competitive agreements. Generally, the agreements which cause or are likely to cause appreciable adverse effect on competition (“AAEC”) are anti-competitive agreements. However, the Competition Act, 2002 (“Act”) recognizes intellectual property rights and to facilitate their protection, the Act permits reasonable restrictions imposed by their owners. Similarly, the Act exempts agreements between exporters as exports do not impact markets in India. …show more content…

The most obvious example would be that of agreements between enterprises dealing in the same products. However, in general, it is important to define the relevant market(s). To attract the provision of the law, the products must be substitutes. Being at the same stage of the production chain implies that the parties to the agreement are both (all) producers, or retailers or wholesaler. As has been interpreted over the years in the U.S. (and enacted more recently in other countries) a dissention is drawn in this regard between horizontal and vertical agreements. In certain circumstances it can be established that firms that are collaborating on some socially valuable activity may need to agree to do away with competition so to establish the cooperative relationship. In this, the European Community law goes beyond the objective of maximizing welfare and explicitly allows some Restrictive contracts if they promote progressiveness and consumers ultimately stand to gain. The Japanese law also allows for actions in contravention of the law provided they are in the “public interest”. It would be dangerous to allow the kind of discretion in interpretation possible under the Japanese law. Any exceptions that are permissible should be clearly laid down. However, we recommend that Restrictive contract which are designed to promote use of energy efficient manufacturing processes and production of Eco-friendly products or conservation of natural resources should be explicitly permitted as

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