Antitrust / competition-law compliance program

Description

Competition law is the unusual case of a regulatory regime where the operative obligation is mostly behavioral rather than documentary: most of the rules say "do not do this thing" rather than "file this report by this date". An antitrust compliance program translates those prohibitions into reviewable artefacts: a written competition-law policy keyed to the conduct prohibitions in the relevant statute (Sherman Act, Clayton Act, EU TFEU Articles 101 and 102, UK Competition Act 1998, and equivalents elsewhere), periodic training for commercial and product staff who write contracts or set pricing or design ranking and recommendation systems, an internal review path for arrangements that could implicate the prohibitions (exclusivity, MFN clauses, refusal to deal, tying, information-sharing with competitors), an investigation and self-disclosure protocol for when something surfaces, and a leniency-program awareness component for the cartel-enforcement edge cases. Compliance counsel typically owns the artefact set; the day-to-day obligation is for product and commercial teams to know which decisions need to route through review before they get made. Once the policy and training are in place, the recurring cost is keeping commercial and product staff oriented to which arrangements need a competition-law check before signing rather than after.

Required by (4 regulations)

• US Antitrust (Platforms)

  US federal competition framework: a written program covering Sherman Act §§1-2 (restraint of trade and monopolization) and Clayton Act §§3 and 7 (exclusive dealing and mergers), with FTC Act §5 (unfair methods of competition) as the broader catch-all that DOJ and FTC have used in recent platform-conduct cases.

  Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1-2; Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. §§14, 18; FTC Act §5, 15 U.S.C. §45

• UK Competition (Platforms)

  UK Competition Act 1998 framework: a written program covering Chapter I (anti-competitive agreements) and Chapter II (abuse of dominance), plus the procedural awareness for Strategic Market Status conduct requirements under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 if the entity has been or could be designated.

  Competition Act 1998 c.41; Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 c.13

• EU Competition (Platforms)

  EU competition framework: a written program covering TFEU Article 101 (anti-competitive agreements and the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation 2022 safe-harbour analysis) and TFEU Article 102 (abuse of dominance), with leniency-program protocol referencing the European Commission's Leniency Notice for cartel cases.

  TFEU Articles 101-102; Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003

• EU DMA

  DMA Articles 13 + 15 — annual compliance report describing measures implemented to ensure compliance with Articles 5, 6, 7; anti-circumvention obligation under Article 13 reaches conduct that undermines effectiveness of obligations whether contractual, commercial, or technical.

  Regulation (EU) 2022/1925

Fulfilled by (2)

• navex · partial · medium effort · $$
  Compliance-program and training platforms cover the policy + training + tracking layer. The review-routing layer is typically built in-house against the company's deal flow.
• In-house build · full · high effort
  Substantive antitrust review requires either in-house competition counsel or external specialist counsel on retainer. The program is operationalized in-house regardless of which counsel does the substantive review.

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• written competition-law policy
• training-completion records
• deal-review log with competition-law sign-off
• leniency-program protocol
• internal investigation report template