(1) Section 1 shall not apply to vertical resale price maintenance by which an undertaking producing newspapers or magazines requires the purchasers of these products by legal or economic means to demand certain resale prices from or to impose the same commitment upon their own customers, down to the resale to the final consumer. Newspapers and magazines shall include products which reproduce or substitute newspapers or magazines and, upon assessment of all circumstances, must be considered as predominantly fulfilling the characteristics of a publishing product, as well as combined products the main feature of which is a newspaper or magazine.
(2) Agreements of the kind described in subsection (1) shall be made in writing as far as they concern prices and price components. It shall suffice for the parties to sign documents referring to a price list or to price information. Section 126(2) of the German Civil Code [Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch] shall not be applicable.
(2a) Section 1 shall not apply to industry agreements concluded between associations of undertakings that maintain resale prices for newspapers or magazines (publishers) pursuant to subsection (1), on the one hand, and associations of their purchasers, which purchase newspapers and magazines subject to resale price maintenance and with a right of return in order to sell them to retailers, also with a right of return (newspaper and magazine wholesalers), on the other hand, for the undertakings represented by such associations, to the extent that these industry agreements provide for a wide-ranging and non-discriminatory distribution of newspaper and magazine lines by newspaper and magazine wholesalers, in particular the prerequisites and compensation for such distribution and the services covered by such compensation. To this extent, the associations mentioned in sentence 1 and the publishers and newspaper and magazine wholesalers represented by them are entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest within the meaning of Article 106(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in order to ensure a wide-ranging and non-discriminatory distribution of newspapers and magazines in stationary retail. Sections 19 and 20 shall remain unaffected.
(2b) Section 1 shall not apply to cooperations relating to publishing activities between newspaper or magazine publishers to the extent that such agreements enable the parties to strengthen their economic base for intermedia competition. Sentence 1 shall not apply to cooperations relating to editorial activities. Upon application, the undertakings shall be entitled to a decision issued by the competition authority pursuant to Section 32c, provided that
1. based on information available to the competition authority, the agreement under sentence 1 does not satisfy the conditions for a prohibition pursuant to Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and
2. the applicants have a significant legal and economic interest in such a decision.
Sections 19 and 20 shall remain unaffected.
(3) The Bundeskartellamt may, acting ex officio or upon the request of a purchaser bound to resale prices, declare the maintenance of resale prices invalid and prohibit the implementation of a new and equivalent price maintenance scheme if
1. resale price maintenance is applied in an abusive manner, or
2. resale price maintenance or its combination with other restraints of competition is capable of increasing the price of the goods subject to resale price maintenance, or of preventing their prices from decreasing, or of restricting their production or sales.
If an industry agreement pursuant to subsection (2a) or an agreement pursuant to subsection (2b) constitutes an abuse of the exemption, the Bundeskartellamt may declare such agreement invalid in whole or in part.
(4) The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy shall report to the legislative bodies on its experience with subsections (2b) and (3) sentence 2 after a period of five years following the entry into force of the provisions.