Britain's Office of Fair Trading on Friday fined Hasbro, the US toy maker,
£4.95m ($7.68m) for price-fixing - the biggest penalty yet imposed under
the new Competition Act, which came into force in March 2000.
Hasbro, Britain's biggest toy and game manufacturer with a product range
that includes Monopoly, Mr Potato Head, Action Man and My Little Pony.
The OFT said Hasbro and 10 distributors broke competition law between early
2001 and July 2001 by entering into price-fixing agreements that prevented
the distributors from selling Hasbro toys and games below Hasbro's list
price without permission.
No fines were imposed on the distributors because the OFT found the
initiative to impose the prices was Hasbro's and the distributors had no
choice but to accept them.
The OFT said it had proposed fining Hasbro £9m but had cut the penalty by
45 per cent under its leniency programme, reflecting Hasbro's decision to
co-operate fully in the investigation. FROM...
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1037872430067
Hey Mr McCATOhead, seen this?
Don't play Big Brother" is business plea to governments on Internet traffic
Paris, 29 November 2002
Business users and providers of communications services have called on the
European Union and governments to scale down their storage requirements for
traffic data to the minimum necessary to fight crime and terrorism.
http://www.iccwbo.org/
AND
New Spanish Internet law will stymie e-commerce
Paris, 22 November 2002
