In principle, agreements among competitors (within or outside a trade association) to apply uniform standards or to refuse to buy products which do not meet such standards are regarded as cartel practices and as such come within the scope of the controls applying to cartels in the respective developed market-economy-countries. In practice, such agreements are generally exempted. In the USA there is no statutory exemption from the general prohibition of cartels in section 1 of the Sherman Act, but it appears that agreements which apply objective, non-discriminatory standards are considered as 'reasonable' and thus lawful. As regards those countries where laws prohibit cartels in principle (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway), and the EEC/EU and ECSC, some make provision for special exemptions for agreements on standards (Germany and Japan) while it would seem that in the others such agreements would normally come under the general exemptions. A number of laws requiring notification and registration of cartels have exempted standardization agreements from this procedure (for example, Australia, UK). Moreover it would be highly unlikely that action under relevant abuse laws would be taken in the case of an objective, non-discriminatory standards agreement.