Kavitha Gupta's blog

  Competition issues with distribution and agency agreements in India Chadha & Co Regulation of the distribution relationship Competing products Are restrictions on the distribution of competing products in distribution agreements enforceable, either during the term of the relationship or afterwards? Indian courts have drawn a clear distinction between non-compete covenants after the term of the agreement and non-compete covenants post the term of an agreement. To determine enforceability of such covenants, the courts consider the question whether the covenant is or is not in restraint of trade. It is well established that the non-compete covenants operative during the period of a contract are generally enforceable if the restriction is reasonable in the context of the particular trade and business, and where the restriction is required to enhance the level of service to the customers and efficiently manage the sale of products. In a recent judgment of the Delhi High Court, whe...

Cheap rooms? Probably not? Trivago’s top deals are hotels which pay the most Cordato Partners The Trivago website creates the impression that it quickly and easily identifies the cheapest available hotel room responding to a consumer’s search. Australia   January 31 2020 But is the impression a transparent comparison of rooms, or is it manipulated and false? The Federal Court of Australia has found that Trivago misled the public by promoting hotels as having cheapest rooms when it was true only 33.2% of the time. The Court will impose pecuniary penalties on Trivago for contravening the  Australian Consumer Law . The decision is  Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Trivago N.V.  [2020] FCA 16  (20 January 2020) (Moshinsky J). In this article, we review the Court’s reasons as to how the Trivago website contravened the  Australian Consumer Law . The Trivago Business Model Trivago N.V. is a foreign company, incorporated in the Net...

Confidentiality in anti-dumping investigations: Supreme Court interprets Rule7 Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan India May 22 2017 A key feature of anti-dumping investigations is the protection available to commercially sensitive information that interested parties provide to an investigating authority. The idea is that such sensitive information should remain in the safe hands of the authority and must not fall in the hands of opposing parties, who may gain commercial advantage from such information. However, this protection is available with some conditions. Rule 7 of the Anti-dumping Rules [see end note 1] (“AD Rules”) provides that a party may claim confidentiality on information, and further, the conditions to be fulfilled when such a claim is made. Rule 7 has been borrowed in the AD Rules from Article 6.5 of the WTO Anti-dumping Agreement. Before we discuss Rule 7, let us look at the following situations that may arise in anti-dumping investigations: Situa...

Competition Tribunal weighs abuse of dominant position provision against privacy and copyright protection Newsletters November 14 2016 | Contributed by Smart & Biggar/Fetherstonhaugh Introduction The Competition Act aims to maintain and encourage competition, in part, to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises have the opportunity to participate in the Canadian economy and to provide consumers with competitive prices and choices. The act includes provisions against abuse of dominant position, intended to prevent a dominant company from taking undue advantage of its position in the marketplace. Under these provisions, the commissioner of competition may apply to the Competition Tribunal to prohibit anti-competitive acts of a company that substantially or completely controls a market, if those acts substantially prevent or lessen competition within the marketplace. Facts The abuse of dominant position issue was brought befor...