What this is
Whether competition law stops a supplier choosing which shops it supplies, on the UK, EU, US and Japanese texts read: no. The rules bite on agreements restricting who a buyer may resell to, on abuse of dominance, and in the US on price discrimination.
How it’s built
- Read statutes and official guidance from the UK, EU, US and Japan.
- UK and EU: restricting a distributor’s resale customers is a hardcore breach, and a policy a distributor goes along with counts as an agreement.
- US: refusing to sell to a dealer is typically lawful. Japan: free choice of partners, but restrictions on distributors can be unlawful.
What we assumed
- The supplier is not dominant in its market.Abuse-of-dominance rules were outside the texts read and are untested here.
Sanity check
No text says in so many words that a supplier may choose its customers; this is a reading of the rules, not legal advice.
Where it comes from
Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes.