Sales in response to unsolicited requests from individual customers, including delivery of goods or services to such customers. Sales generated by general advertising or promotion in the media or on the Internet that reaches customers in other distributors’ exclusive terri- tories or customer groups, but is at the same time a reasonable way to reach customers outside those territories or customer groups (for instance, in non-exclusive territories or in one’s own territory), are normally considered passive. Restrictions on passive sales in vertical agreements are hard-core restrictions and fall outside the Commission’s block exemption regulation on vertical restraints.
Source: Glossary of terms used in EU competition policy, Antitrust and control of concentrations, European Commission, 2002