Cartel companies that control prices or share markets, so that each has a monopoly on part of the market, do not feel the usual competitive pressure to bring new products to market, improve quality and keep prices low. Consumers must therefore ultimately pay more for poor quality products. Cartels are particularly damaging and therefore involve severe penalties for those who are caught. The Commission considered that the contested agreements were contrary to Section 3 of the Law and stated that the network of such agreements allowed OEMs to become monopolistic players on aftermarkets for their vehicle model, to create barriers to market entry and to eliminate competition from independent service providers. Anti-competitive behaviour can be classified into two classifications. Horizontal restrictions concern anti-competitive behaviour involving competitors at the same level of the supply chain. These practices include mergers, cartels, cartels, price agreements, rate discrimination and foreclosure pricing. On the other hand, the second category is a |vertikale restriction, which implements restrictions against competitors due to anti-competitive practices between companies at different levels of the supply chain, for example.B the distribution relationships of suppliers. These practices include exclusive trade, refusal to trade/sell, resale price fixing and more.

Facts – The informant in this case had claimed that the original automotive spare parts manufactured by some of the operations were not freely available on the open market and that most equipment manufacturers (oeMs) and authorized distributors had clauses in their agreements obliging authorized dealers to source spare parts only from OEMs and their authorized suppliers. As a general rule, anti-competitive practices are considered illegal only if the practice results in a significant reduction in competition, which is why, in order to be penalised for any form of anti-competitive behaviour, an undertaking must generally be a monopoly or dominant undertaking in a duopoly or oligopoly with considerable influence on the market. Any company, regardless of its size, sector or legal form, must be aware of these provisions. Competition law applies to all UK and EU markets. Therefore, if you are a small business operating in one of these domestic or foreign markets, you should be careful when entering into agreements with other companies in the same market. The question here is what would be called anti-competitive. Section 3(2) of the Act provides that the main determinant of an anti-competitive agreement is its AAEC in India. It is important to note that section 32 of the Act provides that even if an agreement was entered into outside India, the ICC would be empowered to review such an agreement if such an agreement had an AAEC in India. Despite the effectiveness of leniency programmes in promoting confessions of cartel members, there are still cartels (national and international) that operate under the guise of confidentiality and, therefore, governments must continue to use more conventional instruments to consult and monitor them. Sometimes these traditional investigative tools provide the confessions or hot documents that facilitate prosecutions, but not always. The question that arises is therefore the following: in the absence of a video-recorded cartel meeting, a cooperating participant or incriminating documents, can a cartel be successfully followed, mainly on the basis of “clues”? Research and development agreements and technology transfer agreements are often compatible with competition law, for example because some new products require expensive research that would be too costly for a single company. Agreements on joint production, purchase or sale or standardization may also be legitimate.

Anti-competitive agreements are agreements between competitors aimed at preventing, restricting or distorting competition. § 34 of the Competition Act prohibits anti-competitive agreements, decisions and conduct. .