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to sell products”
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. Active sales are when sellers use advertisements
and promotions to attract customers whereas in a passive sale the sell-
er does not try to attract the customer but the customer finds the seller
and purchases the product. Online sales are considered as passive
sales. It should be noted that passive sales cannot be restricted where-
as suppliers can put restrictions on active sales by the distributors.
VBER Article 4(c) regulates that in a selective distribution system
members cannot be limited in terms of customers. Therefore pursuant
to the Guidelines, preventing customers to view and visit a distributor
in another territory and purchase such distributors products is a hard-
core restriction.
It is considered that agreements enforcing a general prohibition on
Internet sales in a selective distribution agreement will not be regard-
ed as lawful in terms of competition law unless they can be justified
objectively.
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NEWSLETTER 2015
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See: Guidelines, para. 52.