OFT Issues First Short-Form Opinion

The Office of Fair Trading has today issued its first advice under its new short-form opinion process. The process is to be used by the OFT to provide guidance in a timely manner to businesses on the application of competition law to collaboration arrangements between competitors that raise novel or unresolved competition issues.

The UK competition regime no longer offers parties the ability to notify agreements. However, the process has been introduced by the OFT in response to concerns expressed by business that potentially beneficial collaborative arrangements were not going ahead due to concerns about infringing competition law. The OFT will only offer this process for a limited number of cases per year, and will choose these by applying its prioritisation principles.