DOJ Business Advisory Letter 98-A of October 31, 1998 concerning the Apparel Industry Partnership
(Text
excerpted from DOJ source)
Facts: The Apparel Industry Partnership ("Partnership"), an informal association consisting of representatives from footwear and apparel companies, as well as labor, consumer, and human rights organizations, proposed to discuss and decide how to develop standards to be used to inform and assure U.S. consumers that products have been made under decent and humane conditions. (The actual articulation, promulgation, and monitoring of any such standards is not the subject of the instant business review request.) In the course of the discussions, no participant will seek or disclose competitively sensitive nonpublic information and no participant will disclose data from which such information might be discerned. Counsel will be present at all Partnership meetings and a written agenda and written minutes will be produced for each meeting.
Response: The most likely anticompetitive effect of such discussions is the exchange of competitively sensitive information. Provided that the discussions are conducted in accordance with the facts presented, and provided further that direct competitors are not placed together in small working groups where communications are likely to be more detailed than in meetings of all participants, the risk of anticompetitive harm should be small. Moreover, consumers have expressed a desire to know the conditions under which products are manufactured, and the dissemination of accurate information about these conditions could meet this marketplace demand. The Department has no present intention to challenge the proposal.
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Formal DOJ Business Advisory Letter