What a defensible MAP policy covers

US-market practice. A MAP policy is a United States instrument. Resale price maintenance is per-se illegal in the UK and EU — a MAP policy should say explicitly that it applies to US advertising only. This article is general information, not legal advice: the policy itself is counsel’s work.

What does “defensible” mean for a unilateral policy?

A MAP policy isn’t enforced in court, so “defensible” doesn’t mean “will win a lawsuit.” It means the policy preserves the two properties that make the whole structure work. The first is unilateral: under United States v. Colgate & Co. (1919) and the FTC’s guidance on manufacturer-imposed requirements, a brand may announce its policy and deal only with sellers who follow it — as long as it stays an announcement, not an agreement. The second is uniform: a policy applied to some sellers and waived for others stops looking like a policy and starts looking like leverage, and every selective exception erodes the doctrine the program stands on.

Defensible also means not overreaching. The cautionary tale is the FTC’s 2000 action against the five largest CD distributors, whose MAP programs tied cooperative ad funds to compliance across all advertising — including ads retailers funded themselves and signage inside their own stores. The orders required abandoning those MAP programs entirely. A floor on advertised prices is one thing; engineering a world where no discount can ever be communicated is another.

What scope must the policy define?

1. Advertised price, not sale price.The policy governs the price displayed in advertising and listings. It should say explicitly that sellers remain free to sell at any price — that sentence is the difference between MAP and resale price maintenance, and it’s also where cart-discount questions (“is a coupon in checkout a violation?”) get answered in advance rather than improvised later.
2. New-condition product only.The first-sale doctrine lets a lawful owner resell a genuine product at any price, so used and secondhand listings sit outside anything the policy can govern. Saying “new-condition only” in the scope section keeps your enforcement program from ever drifting toward listings it has no business touching — we wrote up why a used eBay listing can never violate MAP separately.
3. Covered channels and geography. Name where the policy looks: US marketplaces, US retail sites, comparison-shopping surfaces like Google Shopping. And state the US limit plainly — pricing enforcement pointed at UK/EU resellers describes conduct regulators there fine brands millions for.
4. Covered products and the floor itself.The SKU list with each product’s MAP, maintained as an appendix or a referenced price list so it can change without re-issuing the policy. Per-SKU floors beat blanket percentages: they’re what your monitoring compares against, listing by listing.

How should promo windows be written?

Your own promotions are the leading cause of self-inflicted MAP chaos: marketing schedules a sale, monitoring flags every participating retailer, and enforcement letters go out about a price you blessed. The policy should provide for scheduled promotional windows — defined in advance with the covered products, the adjusted MAP (a percentage off or a fixed promo price), and a start and end date after which the standard MAP applies again. Two properties matter: the window is announced uniformly (every eligible seller gets the same window, because a promo offered selectively is selective enforcement wearing a party hat), and reversion is automatic — the standard MAP returns by the terms of the policy, not by someone remembering to send a follow-up email.

Why commit to uniform enforcement in writing?

Because the commitment changes your own behavior, and your behavior is the program. A policy that reserves “sole discretion to enforce as we see fit” reads as flexibility but operates as an invitation to enforce against the sellers you’re annoyed at and spare the account your sales team is scared of — and that pattern, once visible, is what sellers cite back at you and what erodes the unilateral-policy posture. The stronger drafting states that the policy applies to all resellers uniformly and that consequences follow the published ladder. It also makes the operational requirement honest: uniform enforcement is only possible if you can see uniformly, which is a monitoring problem, and prove how you responded, which is a record-keeping problem.

What does policy administration look like?

• An effective date and version history. Letters quote the policy in force at observation time; disputes start with “which version?” Date it, keep the prior versions, publish one canonical copy at a stable URL.
• One owner. A single team — usually whoever runs brand protection — owns the price list, the promo calendar, exemption decisions, and the enforcement log. MAP programs die of diffuse ownership faster than they die of clever gray-market sellers.
• No negotiation channel.Administration answers questions about the policy; it doesn’t negotiate terms. The moment key accounts have a bespoke version, you’re maintaining agreements, with the different legal posture Leegin and the state-law patchwork imply.

What monitoring evidence do you need behind the policy?

A policy you can’t observe is a press release. The evidence base that makes the document operational:

1. Advertised-price observations on a stated cadence — daily, for marketplaces — against the MAP in force that day, promo windows included.
2. A timestamped screenshot per violation, captured at observation time, with the listing URL and seller identity.
3. Price history per listing, so “persistent” and “cured” are facts with dates rather than impressions.
4. Cure verification — the at-or-above observation that closes a violation, recorded the same way it was opened.
5. An enforcement log: every letter, to whom, when, with which evidence, plus any exemptions and the reason. This is the uniform-enforcement record, and it’s the first thing you’ll want when a seller — or your counsel — asks how the program actually behaves.

How MAP Protector handles this

MAP Protector operationalizes the policy rather than writing it for you. Your per-SKU floors import from a CSV in about 15 minutes; daily scans across Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Google Shopping compare every advertised price against the MAP in force that day. Promo windows are first-class: product groups reprice MAP for a scheduled window and revert automatically when it ends. The policy excerpt and a link to your published policy document live in settings and are quoted in every letter; used and secondhand listings are excluded structurally, matching a new-condition-only scope. Every violation carries a screenshot and price history, every send lands in an exportable enforcement log, and enforcement funnels ship disabled until a human enables them — an audited action. US-only by design, and included in the $199/mo plan alongside counterfeit and unauthorized-seller coverage.

Frequently asked questions

Draft the policy with counsel — it’s a one-time cost and the document is the foundation of everything above. Then give it eyes: the MAP monitoring page shows what the evidence side looks like running.