Private disclosures of price-related information to a competitor "in the ordinary course of business": A new slippery dip in the political playground of Australian Competition Law

Brent Fisse and Caron Beaton-Wells
(2011) 39 Australian Business Law Review 367-379

 

Overview

The authors discuss what they consider to be the flaws of the new 'ordinary course of business' exclusion in the price signalling bill (s 44ZZW(c). While acknowledging that it may reduce overreach of the proposed price signalling laws, they identify and discuss two key flaws:

• "The exclusion has no cogent policy foundation", but rather was a "last-minute political compromise"
• The "exclusion raises major unresolved issues of statutory interpretation and does not achieve commercial certainty!

 

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Not freely available online

View working draft version on Brent Fisse's website