This article was published on Feb. 20, 2025, at 10:43 a.m. on the ChosunBiz RM Report site.
The Supreme Court ruled that the delivery application (app) Yogiyo's demand for restaurants with which it has contracts to guarantee the lowest price is not a violation of the Fair Trade Act. Both the first and second trial courts also adjudged it as not guilty.
On the 20th, the Supreme Court's First Division (Chief Justice Noh Tae-ak) confirmed the not guilty verdicts of the first and second trials regarding the allegations of Yogiyo's operator, Great Imagination, violating the Fair Trade Act.
Earlier, the Fair Trade Commission imposed a penalty surcharge of 468 million won on Yogiyo for violating the Fair Trade Act by implementing a lowest price guarantee system from 2013 to 2016 and reported it to the prosecutors in June 2020.
The lowest price guarantee system operated by requiring the company to adjust prices so that the prices customers ordered on Yogiyo were not higher than those on other delivery apps or phone orders, and terminating contracts with restaurants that did not comply. Yogiyo explained, "While other delivery app operators received a fixed amount monthly from restaurants, Yogiyo received a percentage of the order amount as a commission," adding, "Some restaurants transferred the commission payable to Yogiyo onto consumers, which led to the planning of the lowest price guarantee system to prevent this."
However, the prosecutors charged that Yogiyo improperly interfered with the management of restaurants by abusing its transaction status, viewing it as a violation of the Fair Trade Act, and filed charges in 2021.
Both the first and second trial courts found that Yogiyo did not violate the Fair Trade Act. The second trial court stated, "It cannot be concluded that merely presenting not to discriminate against restaurants on sales prices as a transaction condition unfairly disadvantages them." It also noted that the lowest price guarantee system contributes to the growth and development of the delivery food market. The court remarked, "If the food prices are not different across delivery apps, consumers can choose the delivery app based on services."
On that day, the Supreme Court also deemed there were no issues with the second trial's judgment.