萬國法律事務所

Dell Taiwan has been fined by the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) 2 million for taking action to restrain competition under Article 19 of the Fair Trade Act.

In 2013, the Southern regional branch of Chunghwa Telecom co. was in a government procurement tender which assigned the supplier of the tender to use the anti-virus software from SonicWall. Dell Taiwan had asked a local distributor not supplying the software from SonicWall to Chunghwa Telecom which disabled it from purchasing the software in Taiwan. Moreover, Dell Taiwan also changing the expiration date of authorization and made the software bought by the local distributor abroad invalid.

The FTC states that SonicWall LLC. is the subsidiary of Dell Inc.. Dell Taiwan does not sell the product from Sonciwall directly but has the control power over the local distributor to promote the product from SonicWall. The local distributor also need Dell Taiwan for obtaining the authorization from the manufacture. Due to the power of Dell in the market and its conducts, the FTC determined that Dell Taiwan has violated the Fair Trade Act accordingly.