The ACI Foundation supports the goals of the antitrust laws to preserve and promote competition and deter anticompetitive conduct. The ACI Foundation is committed both to strict compliance with the antitrust laws and to the avoidance of any appearance of improper or anticompetitive conduct. Therefore, it is the policy and practice of the ACI Foundation to conduct all its meetings and activities in strict compliance with applicable federal and state antitrust laws. This includes activities of the ACI Foundation, the ACI Foundation’s Concrete Research Council, the Concrete Innovation Council, and the Scholarship Council.
Violations of the antitrust laws can result in serious penalties for companies, individuals, and the ACI Foundation itself. These penalties include treble damage awards, fines, and injunctions. Individuals and entities also may be subject to criminal prosecution.
In particular:
- No agreement or understanding shall be made with regard to prices, allocation of territories, coordination of bids, doing business with third parties, or other competitive matters.
- There should be no discussion or conversations regarding prices, competitive pricing strategies, profit margins, or any factors that might affect prices such as discounts, credit terms, warranties, and terms and conditions of sale.
- There should be no discussion or conversations regarding allocations of territories, markets, or customers, i.e., agreements not to compete.
- There should be no discussion or conversations encouraging others not to do business with any particular vendor, supplier, customer, or other person or entity.
- No participant in a meeting, program, or activity of the ACI Foundation, the Concrete Research Council, the Concrete Innovation Council, the Scholarship Council, or any other meeting related to council programs, should disclose confidential marketing or business plans, trade secrets, or other proprietary, competitively sensitive information.
iThese include the Sherman, Clayton, Robinson-Patman, and Federal Trade Commission Acts, all of which are federal statutes. Supplementing these federal statutes are state antitrust acts, which frequently mirror their federal counterparts.