Archive for March, 2012
The Competition Bureau has published its February edition of CB In Brief (see: CB In Brief – February 2012).
This edition includes announcements relating to the Chicoutimi Hospital bid-rigging case, 2012 increase of the size of transaction merger threshold and the Bureau’s new monthly reports of concluded merger reviews.
The Global Competition Review (GCR) has published a volume on private antitrust litigation. This issue includes articles on private antitrust litigation in Europe, the U.S., Turkey and an interview with Procter & Gamble Vice President and General Counsel Libby Rutherford (see: GCR February 2012).
On February 27, 2012, the Commissioner of Competition brought a motion for the production of nine years of MLS data from The Toronto Real Estate Board in this ongoing abuse of dominance case. According to the Commissioner’s motion, the Bureau has unsuccessfully requested this presumably vast volume of MLS data from TREB and now seeks to compel TREB to produce the data, which is, according to the Bureau, “at the very heart of [the] proceeding”.
In particular, the Bureau asserts that TREB’s MLS data is relevant to its assessment of geographic market, market shares of individual brokerages and agents, the ability of real estate brokers that wish to use “virtual office websites” or “VOWs” effectively against incumbent real estate brokers and issues relating to commissions.
The Bureau’s theory in this case is essentially that TREB has abused its dominant position in the residential real estate services market in the Greater Toronto Area through membership rules that restrict its members’ ability to operate “virtual office websites” or “VOWs”.
Real estate board MLS systems in Canada, which are operated by local real estate boards, typically include a range of information relating to both property listings (e.g., price, dimensions and other relevant property characteristics, such as number of rooms, bedrooms, zoning, etc.) and “sold” information once a property is sold (e.g., sale price, number of days a property was on the market, agents involved in the sale, etc.).
While TREB has asserted privacy law concerns regarding the disclosure of its MLS data, the Bureau asserts privacy law exceptions in its pleading. The Bureau also pleads the Tribunal’s discovery rules for the right to obtain production of documents (see: notice of motion, Competition Tribunal Rules).
Hearing dates have been scheduled in this case for September, 2012 (see: Revised Scheduling Order).
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
