Patent and Market Court of Appeal overturns decision against HVAC company

In December 2023, the Swedish Competition Authority decided that Tapwell AB should pay an administrative fine of SEK 16.9 million for violating the prohibition on anti-competitive cooperation. Following an appeal, the Patent and Market Court ruled in March 2025 that the Authority’s decision should be upheld. Tapwell subsequently appealed to the Patent and Market Court of Appeal, which has now overturned the Patent and Market Court’s ruling and set aside the administrative fine. The Patent and Market Court of Appeal found that the Swedish Competition Authority’s investigation did not provide sufficient evidence to establish that Tapwell had entered into an agreement with its retailers on resale price maintenance.

“Once again, we note that the two courts have reached different conclusions in a competition case of significant importance for both the market and consumers. The ruling means that very high evidential standards apply to the Swedish Competition Authority’s investigations when seeking to intervene against serious infringements of the competition rules,” says Marie Östman, Director General of the Swedish Competition Authority.

In its decision, the Swedish Competition Authority concluded that Tapwell, a supplier of kitchen and bathroom fixtures, had, over a period of almost two and a half years, restricted retailers’ ability to determine independently the prices of Tapwell products sold online to consumers. The Authority considered it particularly serious that the conduct concerned online sales, as the impact and dissemination of the pricing restrictions were especially far-reaching in that sales channel.

The Swedish Competition Authority’s mission is to promote well-functioning markets, including through effective enforcement. Over the years, the Authority has received complaints alleging that suppliers in a range of sectors have, to varying degrees, influenced retailers’ freedom to set their own online prices. A recurring feature has been that certain retailers actively assisted suppliers in monitoring competitors’ online prices and raised concerns that competing retailers were charging prices that were considered too low.

“The growing importance of online sales and the increasing use of monitoring tools such as price-monitoring software mean that competition rules must be capable of being enforced effectively to ensure that customers and consumers do not pay unjustifiably high prices. We therefore hoped that this case would provide further judicial guidance on the types of communication between manufacturers and retailers that are incompatible with the competition rules,” says Marie Östman, Director General of the Swedish Competition Authority.

The Swedish Competition Authority will now analyse the ruling and assess its implications for the Authority’s future enforcement work.

The ruling of the Patent and Market Court of Appeal is final and cannot be appealed.

Josefine Cavalera, Legal Counsel, +46 8 700 16 74, josefine.cavalera@kkv.se
Erika Svärdh, Head of Communications, +46 8 700 16 50, erika.svardh@kkv.se

Read the ruling of the Patent and Market Court of Appeal (in Swedish)