ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of the 'legal map', which is important in order to understand the impact of the Agency Regulations on the traditional common law rules of contract and agency. It presents an in-depth analysis of the core parts of the Agency Regulations. The book explores the consequences that termination has for the parties; the right for all commercial agents to claim, one of two kinds of termination payments, a French-law based 'compensation' or a German-law based 'indemnity'. It concentrates on Regulation 20 of the Agency Regulations, the specific provision on post-termination restraint of trade clauses binding on the commercial agent, which, although not technically competition law, is driven by similar priorities. The book examines what happens when the commercial agent has to be treated, for competition law purposes, as an independent trader rather than as an appendage of the principal.
