For more than 45 years, Belgian case-law almost unanimously accepted the longer the length of the exclusive distributorship was, the longer the length of the reasonable notice period should be. The preparatory works on the Act of July 27, 1961, stated that the goal of the reasonable notice period was to provide the distributor enough time to find a new, equal exclusive distributorship. The Courts reasoned that the longer the terminated exclusive distributorship, the more difficult it would be to find a new, equal distributorship and thus the more time should be given to the distributor.