{"id":4764,"date":"2026-08-11T13:16:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/djp-a9vm.1wp.site\/?p=4764"},"modified":"2026-10-19T19:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:08:16","slug":"non-compete-clauses-in-agency-agreements-and-competition-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/non-compete-clauses-in-agency-agreements-and-competition-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-compete clauses in agency agreements and competition law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A post-termination non-compete obligation imposed on an agent which complies with the Civil Code must also be assessed under competition law. We discussed the Civil Code requirements in <a href=\"\/en\/how-to-prohibit-an-agent-from-competing-in-accordance-with-the-civil-code\/\">our earlier article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2757 The level of competition law risk may depend on whether the relationship is a \u201cgenuine agency\u201d: one in which the agent bears no significant financial or commercial risk.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udccc Determining whether an agency is genuine requires analysing all the economic aspects of the relationship between agent and principal. Remember that the concept of genuine agency originates in EU law and has no explicit basis in Polish law, although there is a significant likelihood that the Polish competition authority, UOKiK, or Polish courts will apply it.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udccc If the agent bears significant financial or commercial risk, competition law treats them as an independent distributor. In that case, a post-termination non-compete obligation carries a high risk of infringing competition law if any of the following conditions is not met:<\/p>\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f the restriction is necessary to protect significant, confidential know-how transferred to the agent by the principal;<\/p>\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f the restriction is limited to the point of sale from which the agent operated during the agreement;<\/p>\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f the restriction lasts no longer than one year after the agency agreement ends.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udccc In a genuine agency, the risk of challenging a non-compete obligation that fails any of these conditions is somewhat lower, <u>but still exists<\/u>. Defending its legality requires justification based on the particular circumstances, such as the exceptional importance of the know-how transferred or substantial integration of the agent\u2019s activities into the principal\u2019s organisation during the agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udeab In every case, a post-termination non-compete obligation should be limited to the geographical area in which the agent operated during the agreement and strictly to the goods or services covered by the agent\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n<p>\u26a0\ufe0f Assessing competition law risk will always require analysing the economic conditions of the relationship between agent and principal, the principal\u2019s market power and the characteristics of the market in which they operate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post-termination non-compete obligation imposed on an agent which complies with the Civil Code must also be assessed under competition law. We discussed the Civil Code requirements in our earlier article .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"294","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"iawp_total_views":0,"_djp_featured_image_mode":"full","footnotes":""},"categories":[{"term_id":304,"name":"Agency Tuesday","slug":"agency-tuesday-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":304,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":35,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":304,"category_count":35,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Agency Tuesday","category_nicename":"agency-tuesday-en","category_parent":0},{"term_id":294,"name":"Articles","slug":"articles-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":294,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":100,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":294,"category_count":100,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Articles","category_nicename":"articles-en","category_parent":0},{"term_id":301,"name":"Banking","slug":"banking-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":301,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":38,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":301,"category_count":38,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Banking","category_nicename":"banking-en","category_parent":0}],"tags":[],"djp_center":[287],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agency-tuesday-en","category-articles-en","category-banking-en","djp_center-agency-tuesday"],"acf":{"djp_promote_now":false,"djp_promotion_days":7},"images":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/djp-zakaz-konkurencji-w-umowach-agencyjnych-a-prawo-antymonopolowe-150x150.webp","medium":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/djp-zakaz-konkurencji-w-umowach-agencyjnych-a-prawo-antymonopolowe-300x169.webp","medium_large":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/djp-zakaz-konkurencji-w-umowach-agencyjnych-a-prawo-antymonopolowe-768x432.webp","large":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/djp-zakaz-konkurencji-w-umowach-agencyjnych-a-prawo-antymonopolowe-1024x576.webp","full":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/djp-zakaz-konkurencji-w-umowach-agencyjnych-a-prawo-antymonopolowe.webp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4764"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5569,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions\/5569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"djp_center","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/djp_center?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djp.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}