Legal Research On Agreements Of Vertical Territorial And Customer Restraints

According to the great harm of lateral monopoly to economic development, theworld realized that the necessity of regulating lateral monopoly. Due to the smallerharm of vertical restriction, it doesn’t attract enough attention of legal. With the rapiddevelopment of the global economy and the rise of large enterprise groups, especiallylarge-scale retail trade, vertical monopoly has great effect to avoid free-ridingbehavior and promote the brands competitions and economic development, but alsoincreasingly showing strong negative impact and forcing to attract the attention ofjurisprudence. To compare with the vanguard of U.S.A, our regulations of antitrust aretoo less, and the regulations of vertical monopoly are rare, so that our regulationscan’t keep up with the pace of economic development.Throughout the ‘Anti-Monopoly Law’ and other relevant regulations, theregulations of vertical monopoly are just in Article14‘No human operators andtrading partners can follow the agreements:(a)fixed price for resale to other person;(b) limited the lowest price for resale to a third party;(c) the other agreements whichAnti-Monopoly Law Enforcement Authority forbid.’ Above-mentioned, theregulations of vertical restriction are very rare and indistinct. Therefore, the relevantjudiciary and enforcement authority can’t apply the law. The regulations of verticalterritorial and customer restraint are more rare, just being in Article14(c), no specific ones. For those reasons, perfecting the regulations of vertical territorial and customerrestraint is very necessary and urgent.January21,2013, Johnson protracted case, after several years and trails, the ShanghaiHigh Court finally made a decision on this case. In the judgment, Shanghai HighCourt announced the legal nature and applicable rules of the vertical territorial andcustomer restraint. It became the important logo. However, as the anti-monopolyenforcement authority applied the different rules. In February22,the StateAdministration for Commodity Prices of Guizhou announced an administrativepenalty to Maotai who forbidden the regulation of vertical territorial and customerrestraint. At the same day, Development and Reform Committee of Sichuanannounced an administrative penalty to Wuliangye. In these two cases, theadministrative agent applied the ‘Per Se Illegal Rule,’ against the judgment. About thecases of anti-monopoly, the courts apply the ‘Rule of Reason’. On the contrary, theadministrative agents apply the ‘Per Se Illegal Rule.’ According to the differentattitude to the vertical territorial and customer restraint, our Anti-Monopoly Lawshows the self-contradictory and disorder.Civil judgments and administrative penalties apply the different rules to thesame act, apply the same Article14(c) of Anti-Monopoly Law, lead to different results.By the same law, the courts and administrative agents having the completely differentconclusions, attract the attention of legal, and be the article of mine. In this article, Iwill detail the reasons why I agree to use the ‘Rule of Reason’ for the verticalterritorial and customer restraint.