Anti-monopoly Law Regulation Of The Vertical Non-price Restriction Behavior

It is the common to emphasize price competition while ignoring non-price competition in many anti-monopoly law textbooks and literatures.Although vertical restriction is the key domain of anti-monopoly law enforcement in various countries,items(1)and(2)of article 14 of the anti-monopoly law of China only list the price monopoly agreement,namely the resale price maintenance,while the vertical non-price restrictions are regulated by miscellaneous provisions.From the academic perspective,vertical non-price restriction has overlaps with abuse of market dominant position in behavior pattern,and the procompetitive effect on inter-brand competition makes the application of competition theory complicated.In order to regulate the vertical non-price restriction,it is necessary to put forward specific methods and steps on the basis of distinguishing specific forms and combining the competitive effect of the behavior and the feasibility of the regulation scheme.With the vigorous development of Internet platform economy,new forms of vertical non-price restriction keep emerging in practice,and its competitive effect is complicated due to its integration with the characteristics of bilateral and multilateral platforms.In the absence of specific supervision methods for Internet platform "either-or selection" issue in China,it is necessary to draw lessons from the methods and steps of anti-monopoly analysis on platform economy and new forms of vertical non-price restrictions emerging in the network economy in the European Union and the United States.By summarizing the regulatory approaches to vertical non-price restrictions in other major antitrust jurisdictions through the case of American express credit card anti-steering clauses case and two cases of European Union restrictions on online sales in selective distribution systems,this paper puts forward some suggestions on the anti-monopoly regulation of vertical non-price restriction in China,in order to provide reference for legislation and law enforcement.