On March 25, 2022, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (“JFTC”) announced the closure of its investigation against a major US-based tennis racket manufacturer and its sole authorised distributor in Japan, after accepting their proposed commitment plans.
This was also the first enforcement action taken by the JFTC against a foreign supplier in a parallel import case, suggesting that the Commitment Procedure introduced in December 2018 may have helped overcome enforcement challenges in such cases. In the past, the JFTC has targeted only domestic distributors in suspected competition law infringements involving parallel imports.