{"id":761,"date":"2018-03-02T11:46:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T11:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2018-03-02T11:46:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T11:46:26","slug":"about-competition-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/about-competition-law","title":{"rendered":"A little about competition law&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Competition law allows for fair competition to be maintained between companies and prevents companies taking part in anti-competitive behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>The UK is governed by UK and EU competition laws, and if it&#8217;s <strong>found that a company has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, there can be serious consequences<\/strong>. The two common ways in which competition law can be breached is: engaging in anti-competitive agreements; abuse of a dominant market position.<\/p>\n<p>Both can lead to fines for offending companies.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Anti-competitive agreements<\/h2>\n<p>An agreement that is made by companies that restricts or manipulates competition within the EU and UK can be classed as anti-competitive agreements that are prohibited by law.<\/p>\n<p>The types of agreements can include:<\/p>\n<div class=\"well\">\n<ul class=\"blog-list\">\n<li>The fixing of purchase or selling prices<\/li>\n<li>The limit or control of a market through its production or technical development<\/li>\n<li>Agreeing to share market resources<\/li>\n<li>Agreements that have different conditions depending who it is<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Abuse of a dominant market position<\/h3>\n<p>If a company holds the dominant position within a particular market, it could act against the spirit of competition to the detriment of competitors and consumers. Just because a company does hold the dominant position does not mean it is breaching competition law, but behaviour that could breach competition law can include:<\/p>\n<div class=\"well\">\n<ul class=\"blog-list\">\n<li>Refusing to supply a service or grant access to a service<\/li>\n<li>Imposing unfair trading terms<\/li>\n<li>Making a buyer purchase some or all of their products from a second purchase if they wish to purchase one thing<\/li>\n<li>Imposing unfair trade terms of being exclusive as to who is being sold to<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Consequences<\/h3>\n<p>The consequences for engaging in anti-competitive behaviour like this can include:<\/p>\n<div class=\"well\">\n<ul class=\"blog-list\">\n<li>Fines of up to 10% of their global turnover<\/li>\n<li>Actions by third parties against them such as claiming for damages if it can be shown a loss occurred due to the anti-competitive behaviour<\/li>\n<li>Individuals being disqualified from being a company director<\/li>\n<li>An injunction can be enforced<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Competition law allows for fair competition to be maintained between companies and prevents companies taking part in anti-competitive behaviour. The UK is governed by UK and EU competition laws, and if it&#8217;s found that a company has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, there can be serious consequences. The two common ways in which competition law can &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/about-competition-law\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A little about competition law&#8230;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","tag-competition-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/what_we_do.jpg?fit=725%2C250&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.competitionlawyers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}