The Legal Issues In The Process Of Resolution Of Resale Price Maintenance Disputes

Apart from investigation of cases of resale price maintenance by anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies, anti-monopoly civil litigation has become an important driving force of the regulation of resale price maintenance by anti-monopoly law in practice. From the perspective of Chinese anti-monopoly judicial practice, with the increasingly number of resale price maintenance cases, it shows a worse development trend, which is the reason a higher standard rules for the judicial agencies to deal with those kinds of disputes.Being based on the perspective of anti-monopoly civil litigation, this thesis takes the typical case “Rui Bang co. v. Johnson co.” as a clue, and summarizes problems which are urgently to be solved on resolution of resale price maintenance disputes. These controversial issues are the plaintiff standing of participants of resale price maintenance, the cognizance of the illegality of resale price maintenance and the distribution of the burden of proof of resale price maintenance’s anti-competition effect. The three controversial issues are related with each other, being unified in the process of resolution of resale price maintenance disputes.Considering the current situation of Chinese social and economic development and the purpose of legislation of Chinese anti-monopoly law, and referring to mature experience of legislation and judicial practice in the United States and the European Union, this thesis draws conclusions that China should clear that participants of resale price maintenance have plaintiff standing to file an anti-monopoly civil litigation, and China should apply the principle of general prohibition plus exception exemption to cognizance the illegality of resale price maintenance, and the plaintiff has no need to bear the burden of proof of resale price maintenance’s anti-competition effect, so the defendant should bear the burden of proof of the conditions of exemption which resale price maintenance should comply with.