(Commerce) the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors. US equivalent: fair trade Abbreviation: rpm
EU and UK competition authorities have been very active in investigating resale price maintenance in recent years and have together issued several infringement decisions.
Nevertheless, at times antitrust law has been hostile to restrictions of intrabrand competition (in particular, resale price maintenance), even in the absence of anticompetitive effects on interbrand competition.
Resale price maintenance alleviates the problem of double marginalization, and exclusive dealing enables manufacturers to protect their investments against potential retailer opportunism.
It said that its provisional view was that each of the alleged nine agreements amounted to resale price maintenance, in a "serious infringement of competition law".
In most instances, manufacturers will now be able to use minimum resale price maintenance when dealing with retailers without violating federal antitrust laws.
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