Global Competition Review にコメントが掲載されました

平山賢太郎弁護士による英語コメントが、独禁法専門誌 Global Competition Review の記事「JFTC cancels cease and desist order following procedural complaint」（2021年2月3日）に掲載されました。

Kentaro Hirayama at Hirayama Law Offices in Tokyo said the JFTC was obligated to issue a second hearing decision to amend its original order based on the Tokyo High Court’s ruling. The JFTC’s hearing procedure has since been abolished following amendments to the Antimonopoly Act, but the Sanyo Marunaka case was grandfathered in, he said.

Hirayama noted that a “superior position” is determined by analysing the relationship between a company and its respective suppliers, as opposed to calculating market shares in traditional abuse of dominance cases.

A presumably superior party should be given an opportunity to examine the list of suppliers over which the JFTC has alleged superiority, Hirayama said. 

“This list is indispensable for Sanyo Marunaka to effectively rebut the JFTC’s findings of superiority to each supplier,” so it is surprising that the agency failed to do so, Hirayama said.

The JFTC has since changed its practice and now attaches a full list of suppliers with an alleged inferior position when issuing these types of orders, Hirayama noted.