The Competition Bureau announced today that more than 450,000 textile articles have been re-labelled and over 250 Web pages corrected as a result of the Bureau's efforts to ensure that textile articles derived from bamboo are accurately labelled and advertised. The Bureau took this initiative because of concerns over potentially misleading labelling and advertising in the marketplace with respect to textile articles labelled "bamboo".
The Competition Bureau announced today that it has reached a consent agreement with Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. and Live Nation, Inc. that resolves the Bureau's concerns about their proposed merger. The agreement requires divestitures by Ticketmaster to facilitate competition in the ticketing services market. It also requires Ticketmaster to sell its Paciolan ticketing business and to licence its ticketing system for use by a third party event promoter. The consent agreement also contains some behavioural provisions.
Susan M. Hutton and Jeffrey Brown
The Canadian Competition Bureau published the promised Competitor Collaboration Guidelines on December 23, 2009, less than three months before the coming into force of the new, stricter, criminal cartel provisions and their companion civil provisions applicable to non-criminal, but anti-competitive, competitor agreements. The Guidelines, which were preceded by an earlier consultation draft, published in May 2009, answer several questions raised by the new sections 45 and 90.1 of the Competition Act, but (unavoidably) leave many more to be clarified by the courts. Anyone doing business in Canada will wish to take stock of their dealings with competitors prior to the implementation of the new law on March 12, 2010. Seemingly innocuous agreements that did not appear to have a significant adverse effect on competition may now attract criminal (and civil) liability.
Continue Reading...Jeffrey Brown and Susan M. Hutton
On October 15, 2009, the Federal Court of Appeal allowed the Commissioner of Competition's appeal of a Competition Tribunal decision involving misleading representations by a Vancouver career-consulting business.
The principal issue in the case, The Commissioner of Competition v. Premier Career Management Group Corp. and Minto Roy, 2009 FCA 295, was "whether . representations to certain individuals, though made individually and in private, were nevertheless made 'to the public'" within the meaning of the Competition Act. The Court also addressed the issue of whether or not the representations in question were false and misleading and, if yes, whether they were false and misleading in a material respect.
Continue Reading...On December 1, 2009, Bill C-27, also known as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, passed through first reading in the Senate. Its objective is to regulate certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, such as spam, spyware and internet fraud, in order to promote efficiency and adaptability in the Canadian economy. More specifically, it will prohibit the sending of commercial electronic messages without the prior consent of the recipient, as well as provide rules governing the sending of those types of messages and a mechanism for withdrawing consent. It will also prohibit practices relating to the alteration of data transmission and the unauthorized installation of computer programs. When implemented, Bill C-27 will amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act.
Continue Reading...Unless changed by regulation, the "size of target" threshold for advance notification under the Competition Act of transactions involving Canadian businesses will likely be reduced to C$67 million, in accordance with the GDP indexing provisions which were introduced in amendments to the Act last March. The amount will be official once published by the Minister in the Canada Gazette, and until then the previous C$70 million threshold continues to apply.
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The Competition Bureau announced today that it has entered into consent agreements with two Canadian hot tub retailers, Polar Spas (Edmonton) Ltd. and Sleepwise Inc., regarding claims that certain hot tub products were associated with the ENERGY STAR Program.
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