Digital tools as a double-edged sword: lessons from Italy's Morellato case

On 17 March 2026, the Italian competition authority (AGCM) closed its investigation into Morellato S.p.A. (a leading Italian jewellery and watch manufacturer) imposing a fine of EUR 25.9 million. The case offers a powerful illustration of issues of the growing role of digital tools, both as instruments that companies use to implement potentially unlawful conduct and as investigative resources that enable competition authorities to build compelling cases at speed. 

What you need to know

• The AGCM has fined a jewellery and watch manufacturer EUR 25.9 million for using digital tools to reduce intra-brand competition through resale price maintenance and banning its distributors from using third-party marketplaces.
• This case is a clear reminder that digital tools are a double-edged sword: the same software that gives companies granular control over their distribution networks also generates a comprehensive and timestamped evidentiary record that competition authorities are increasingly equipped to analyse.

The case in brief

Morellato operates a selective distribution system for mid-range jewellery and watches across Italy, selling through its own stores and a network of independent jewellers. The AGCM found that Morellato had engaged in two distinct anticompetitive vertical restraints, in violation of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): 

• Resale Price Maintenance (RPM): Morellato imposed maximum discount levels on its authorised distributors for online sales (0% on new products, up to 10% on catalogue items, and 30 to 50% on discontinued items) effectively removing their ability to set prices independently. The presence of the RPM entailed that the distribution agreement between Morellato and its distributors could not benefit from the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (VBER).
• Discriminatory marketplace ban: Starting in 2018, Morellato included a clause in its selective distribution contracts expressly prohibiting authorised dealers from selling on third-party marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay: "sales through shops and retailers on the web and third-party platforms (such as Amazon, eBay, etc.) are not permitted". However, Morellato itself continued to sell actively on those very platforms; both as a seller on Amazon and through a vendor agreement under which Amazon purchased Morellato products wholesale and resold them as an independent distributor.

Digital tools as enforcement mechanisms

What makes this case particularly notable is how Morellato implemented and enforced these restrictions. The company did not rely on occasional manual checks: instead, it deployed a sophisticated digital infrastructure.

Morellato used Competitoor which is a web-scraping and price-monitoring software. Since July 2018, Competitoor has performed daily scans of Amazon to detect new sellers of Morellato products and monitored distributors' pricing across all online channels on a weekly basis. The software generated detailed Excel reports identifying each distributor's products, prices, deviation from Morellato's discount thresholds, and even their tax identification numbers, thus enabling "timely intervention". These reports were split into two tabs: one labelled "AMAZON E EBAY" (tracking marketplace ban violations) and another labelled "POLICY SCONTO" (tracking pricing policy violations). 

Once Competitoor flagged a violation, an escalating system of retaliation was triggered: warnings via sales agents, blocking of orders in the SAP enterprise system, and (in the most severe cases) blocking distributors' Amazon accounts by filing complaints with Amazon. 

Morellato also used Amazon Transparency which is a product-tracing programme in principle designed to prevent counterfeiting (using certain serial numbers). However, Morellato repurposed the tool to control pricing and exclude third-party sellers (i.e. Morellato did not allow its distribution network to access such tool).

The counterfeiting defence

Morellato's primary defence was that the marketplace ban and the price monitoring were necessary to combat counterfeiting, claiming that 20 to 30% of the products on marketplaces were counterfeit. The company argued that Competitoor's detection of abnormally low prices served as an indicator of potentially fake products. 

The AGCM rejected this argument on several grounds:

• First, the vast majority of discounts flagged by Competitoor were modest (between 15% and 25%) and hardly indicative of counterfeiting. 
• Second, Competitoor's own logic contradicted the defence: counterfeit products that were sold at prices within the permitted discount thresholds were never flagged by the software. The system was designed to detect pricing deviations, not product authenticity. 
• Third, when distributors aligned their prices with Morellato's thresholds, their orders were unblocked, without any verification of whether the products were genuine. 
• Finally, the AGCM pointed out that less restrictive alternatives existed: Morellato already applied unique serial numbers to its watches and could have extended Amazon Transparency codes to its authorised network, allowing authenticated sales on the platform without a blanket ban. 

Selective distribution and limits on marketplace bans when the VBER does not apply

EU competition law allows manufacturers to select their distributors based on qualitative or quantitative criteria, and to impose reasonable standards for the presentation and sale of branded products, including the possibility of restricting sales on online marketplaces (see our March 2026 update). However, there are clear boundaries for imposing this type of restriction. In particular, this is the case where an agreement does not benefit from the VBER, as in the case of Morellato. In fact, in the circumstances, the AGCM found that Morellato engaged in RPM (i.e. a hardcore restriction) and therefore the agreement with its distributors could not benefit from the VBER (paragraph 221 of the AGCM's decision). 

When an agreement does not benefit from the VBER, the approach is more restrictive, as the Metro criteria must be satisfied: (i) the nature of the goods or services must justify such a system; (ii) resellers must be chosen based on objective, qualitative criteria applied uniformly and without discrimination; and (iii) the criteria must not exceed what is necessary. Compliance with the Metro criteria requires not only an overall assessment of the distribution system, but also a clause-by-clause analysis to ensure any restrictive provisions are proportionate and strictly necessary to achieve the system’s objectives. 

This is what the AGCM did in relation to the marketplace ban. In that respect, the AGCM recalled that when a manufacturer adopts a discriminatory online policy it contravenes the Metro criteria, and therefore a discriminatory marketplace ban would unlikely to benefit from an individual exemption under Article 101(3) TFEU (paragraph 35 of the decision). Morellato's policy banned its distributors from using online marketplaces, while simultaneously using that channel for its own sales. The ban was particularly significant in relation to the Amazon marketplace, which the AGCM pointedly noted is a designated gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (a platform with over 45 million active monthly end users and 10,000 active business users in the EU annually, controlling a critical gateway for commercial access to consumers). Precluding distributors from using this channel substantially reduced intra-brand competition, especially for small and medium-sized jewellers for whom marketplaces represent approximately 47% of total online sales. 

Digital forensics: one year from opening to decision

The case is a reminder that designing a compliant selective distribution network is not a trivial exercise. While RPM remains a hardcore restriction, EU competition rules do permit setting up a selective distribution restricting sales on online marketplaces. However, marketplace bans in agreements which do not benefit from the VBER (e.g. because it includes a hardcore restriction such as RPM), the marketplace ban is also likely to fall afoul the competition rules if the policy is discriminatory. 

On the enforcement side, this case is notable for the speed at which it was resolved. The investigation was opened on 18 March 2025, following an anonymous whistleblower complaint. The final decision was adopted one year later, on 17 March 2026. In between, the AGCM conducted on-site inspections, extended the scope of the investigation to include RPM (in July 2025), rejected proposed commitments (in November 2025), administered a large-scale survey of 1,200 jewellery retailers, and issued a detailed 84 page decision. This pace would have been unthinkable without modern digital forensic capabilities: in 2024 the AGCM created an internal Data-Science Unit. The sheer volume of internal emails, Competitoor reports, SAP data exports, and analytics collected during the inspection (and the ability to process and cross-reference them rapidly) was clearly central to reconstructing the entire system of monitoring, retaliation, and RPM. The same digital tools that Morellato used to enforce its policies ultimately created the very trail of evidence that the Authority followed.