In this Roundup, we highlight the main developments in Indian competition law in February 2020.

Draft Competition (Amendment) Bill

As reported in our earlier briefing, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) published the Draft Competition (Amendment) Bill seeking public comments until 6 March 2020 (the MCA has just extended this to 13 March). The Draft Bill, which reflected recommendations made by the Competition Law Review Committee, contained a large number of proposed amendments to the Competition Act, 2002 (Competition Act). Important proposed changes included: (i) the introduction of settlement/commitment procedures for vertical agreements and abuse of dominance cases; (ii) the extension of the intellectual property rights defence to cover all IPR rights and to apply to abuse of dominance cases as well as to anti-competitive agreements; (iii) the possibility of introducing deal value, market or other criteria for the notification of mergers; and (iv) new governance arrangements for the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

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