Antitrust Guidelines

The following topics are NOT TO BE DISCUSSED on this website or at any gathering (formal or informal, physical or virtual) involving MIDI Association members:

DO NOT discuss pricing with other attendees or your competitors at all.
DO NOT discuss matters related to prices, such as discounts, credit terms, profit levels or volume of service.
DO NOT discuss customers, territories, bids, promotions, marketing support, payments or any other similar matter with other attendees or your competitors.
DO NOT make comments that could be interpreted as “signaling” future changes in prices.
DO NOT discuss or seek to obtain competitive price information from a competitor.
DO NOT discuss dividing up, allocating or rationalizing markets, bids, geographic areas, types of business or customers.
DO NOT discuss refusals to deal with any suppliers, customers or other competitors. For example, if you were to agree with any other attendee to boycott a certain supplier for the purpose of forcing that supplier to lower its prices, such an agreement could violate the antitrustlaws. Avoid all discussions that could lead to an unlawful group boycott of any supplier, customer or competitor.
DO NOT discuss present or future competitive plans and/or strategies nor any specific customer information or specific costs.
DO NOT discuss wages, salary rates, equipment prices or other actual costs of providing service for or to individual companies. These costs are an element of price and should not be discussed.
In any discussion of industry “best practices,” discussions should be limited to efforts to reduce costs or realize some other efficiency and should further be limited to what is reasonably necessary to accomplish these legitimate goals. NO AGREEMENT should be reached to use a particular practice, to deal with suppliers or customers on particular terms or to exclude a competitor for using a different practice. Where possible, “best practices” discussions should be led by technical personnel familiar with such practices rather than sales or marketing personnel.

In addition, documents that contain ambiguous or other carelessly worded statements can lead to antitrust claims, even if they are inaccurate. Care in the creation and retention of Meeting documents is critical to avoiding misinterpretations that can lead to costly litigation and other antitrust problems. The best policy is to avoid creating unnecessary documents. Ensure that all documents are precisely worded. You should consult your respective legal counsel, and have them review in advance any documents created at, or from, any Meeting, other than routine correspondence.

In some instances, these guidelines may be more restrictive than the letter of the Antitrust law. But they are designed to ensure compliance with U.S. Antitrust laws and to allow us to have a productive exchange of ideas while protecting The MIDI Associion, our members, and our partners.