On 5 April 2017, the Duesseldorf Higher Regional Court confirmed the August 2015 decision of the Federal Cartel Office finding that it is anti-competitive and therefore illegal to impose on distributors a general prohibition on the use of online price comparison portals.
The Cartel Office had faulted Asics over imposing the following restrictions on its distributors: (1) a complete ban on the use of online marketplaces such as eBay or Amazon; (2) restricting supporting price comparison engines; (3) prohibiting the use of the Asics brand names on third party websites; and (4) the very detailed segmentation of distributors into more than 20 categories, and resulting restrictions on cross-deliveries to other authorised distributors in other categories and on the product ranges for supply to final customers.