New Commitment Procedure under Anti-Monopoly Act

I. Introduction
On December 30, 2018, a new commitment procedure under the Anti-monopoly Act (the “AMA”) came into effect following the entry into force of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as TPP11). The commitment procedure enables enterprises to voluntarily resolve suspected violations of the AMA with the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) and, if a commitment is approved, the conduct of the enterprise concerned will not be determined to be a violation of the AMA and the enterprise will not be subject to legal penalties.

In addition to all future investigations, the new commitment procedure is available to ongoing investigations which had already been initiated prior to December 30, 2018.

It is expected that the new procedure may lead to the JFTC taking a more active enforcement role going forward.

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