The Competition Tribunal ruled in favor of the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office and Philip Morris Chile Comercializadora Ltda., in lawsuits against Compañía Chilena de Tabacos S.A., declaring that the subscription of contractual clauses of renting advertising space or advertising rights by this company, in its practical application, restrict and hinder competition, or at least tend to produce those effects.
According to Article 3 of Decree Law 211, in the cases where Compañía Chilena de Tabacos S.A. or its related companies execute or celebrate any action, act or convention regarding the use of advertising space in points of sale of the “high trade” channel (medium to large sized establishment, such as pubs, restaurants, discotheques, tobacco stores, minimarkets, gas stations, and supermarkets, among others), whose implementation implies exclusivity or produces an analogous result when implementing advertisements in the legally available space for it in the venue, the defendant will have to: (i) in the cases where Compañía Chilena de Tabacos S.A.’s competitors do not have a cigarette display in a visually equivalent place from the clients’ perspective, the company will have to reserve and give up twenty percent of the “facing” of the displays that it concedes to the point of sale, for effective exhibition of cigarettes of its competitors, with a prohibition to block that exhibition by any means; and (ii) abstain from performing acts or conventions destined to block any lawful promotional activity.
The Competition Tribunal declared that the actions emanating from the conducts that occurred before December 24, 2007, in the case of those accused by the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office, and those that occurred before May 14, 2008, in the case of those excluded from the National Economic Prosecutors Office’s lawsuit and accused by Philip Morris Chile Comercializadora Limitada, exceeded the statute of limitations.