Competition Law for E-Commerce

Online shops and marketplace listings combine advertising, consumer-information and platform-specific presentation. Competition-law risk often arises from the total customer journey rather than from one isolated page.

Back to Competition Law.

Shop information and advertising

Product descriptions, prices, availability claims, checkout information, withdrawal information and promotional statements should be consistent and legally supportable.

Marketplace listings

eBay, Amazon and other platforms impose technical templates that do not remove the seller’s legal responsibility. Seller status, commercial claims and mandatory information should be reviewed in the actual listing environment.

Preventive review

A structured review before launch or after major shop changes can identify recurring risk areas before they become the basis for a competitor complaint or cease-and-desist letter.

Preparing a competition-law review

Please preserve the complete advertisement, shop page or marketplace listing, including screenshots with date, URL and surrounding context. Any cease-and-desist correspondence, proposed undertaking, invoices and a concise chronology are also useful. For advertising claims, documents supporting the factual basis of the statement can be as important as the wording itself.

E-commerce compliance can also involve consumer, contract and data-protection law. This page focuses on competition-law issues.