| Consten SaRL and Grundig GmbH v Commission | |
| Court: | European Court of Justice |
| Citations: | (1966) Case 56/64 and 58/64, [1966] ECR 299 |
| Keywords: | Competition, collusion |
Consten SaRL and Grundig GmbH v Commission (1966) Case 56/64 is an EU competition law case, concerning vertical anti-competitive agreements.
A third-party company, UNEF, bought Grundig products in Germany and began distributing "grey imports" into France, whereupon Consten and Grundig sought to prevent UNEF from doing so, claiming, inter alia, that UNEF was abusing Grundig's copyright in its own trade name and logos.
The Commission viewed Consten's and Grundig's action against UNEF as an unlawful breach of Article 85 of the Treaty of Rome (now Art 101 of the TFEU), as it was important to ensure that competing parallel imports from one state to another were unhindered. The case was referred for a Preliminary Ruling to the European Court of Justice under Article 177.
Agreeing with the Commission, the ECJ held that the agreement was unlawful. It rejected the argument that allowing exclusive distributorships protected a distributor's legitimate interest, by hypothetically preventing competitors (once the costs for initial market penetration had been spent) from free riding on the investment of advertising and marketing initially by the distributor, and then undercutting prices.