New financial year 2019-2020: Competition & Consumer

Big shots still to be fired by competition regulator in 2019

In the first half of the new financial year, on 13 September 2019, we will see the repeal of the intellectual property exemption in subsection 51(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act come into effect (see our article here). On 21 June 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released draft guidelines for consultation. We encourage clients to consider their existing contracts and arrangements prior to the repeal taking effect to ensure they are not in breach of competition laws by way of their previous reliance on the exemption.

We also expect to see plenty of activity from the chief regulator, the ACCC in its priority areas including actions in respect of electrical and whitegoods products and customer loyalty programs. In February 2019, the ACCC announced it was closely examining the use of any personal data collected by schemes in the airline, retail and hospitality sectors,