First to the finish line: Court of Appeal overturns CAT and tackles infringements by object

11/05/26

Deckers UK Limited v Up and Running (UK) Limited [2026] EWCA Civ 553

The Court of Appeal has handed down a significant judgment on the proper approach to object infringements of competition law. 

The case concerned Deckers’ arrangements for distribution of its HOKA brand of running shoes.  The Competition Appeal Tribunal had found that the refusal of Deckers to permit one of its distributors, Up and Running, to sell its shoes on a discount-only website amounted to resale price maintenance.  On that basis, the CAT found that the arrangements infringed the Chapter I prohibition by object and did not benefit from block exemption under the Commission vertical block exemption in force at the relevant time.

The Court of Appeal disagreed.  The Court held that the CAT was wrong to find that any intention to curb price competition gives rise to resale price maintenance or to an infringement of competition law by object.  The CAT had focused exclusively on the purpose of the agreement. However, this was only one of the factors to be taken into account.  It was also essential to examine the economic context of the arrangements in order to determine whether the agreement exerted a sufficient degree of harm to competition.  Here, given the limited scale of the arrangements and the market shares of the parties, there was no basis on which the CAT could have drawn the conclusion that the arrangements had the object of restricting competition. 

The full judgment can be found here.