Latest posts
The General Court partially annulled the Commission's Decision on CISAC
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Last week, the General Court (“GC”) adopted its judgment in the CISAC case whereby it partially annulled the 2008 Commission’s decision. CISAC is an international organisation which represents collecting societies. Collecting societies manage c...
Bank Mergers in Economies Facing Sovereign Debt Crises - NBG/ Eurobank
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Over the past year, merger activity in the Greek banking sector picked up significantly. The Greek Competition Authority approved concentrations such as Piraeus/ ATE, Alpha/ Emporiki, and Piraeus/ Geniki. Most recently, a merger between the largest G...
Antitrust Compliance Programmes & Optimal Antitrust Enforcement: A Reply to Wouter Wils
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Here is the abstract of my new paper: In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, Mr. Wils published an article discussing the relationship between compliance programmes and competition law enforcement in the EU. This paper questi...
Easter Wishes and Egg Cartels
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The Antitrust Hotch Potch team wishes to all happy Easter holidays! And if anyone has withdrawal syndromes over the next few days, we suggest three interesting egg cartel cases in Latvia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, to continue our tradition of seasonal..
CJEU Ruling Overturns General Court on France Télécom State Aid
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On 19 March 2013, the CJEU handed in its judgment in a State aid case involving France Télécom (“FT”). The facts of the case are as follows. FT, which was State-owned by 56.45% of its share capital, found itself in...
2012 Framework on Public Compensation for SGEIs: Application in the Postal Sector
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Here is the abstract of my new paper with Christos: The legal rules applicable to State compensation for services of general economic interest (“SGEIs”) were recently revised by the European Commission. This led to the adoption of the “2012 SGE...
Düsseldorf court refers five questions to the CJEU regarding standard-essential patents and Article 102 TFEU
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In the context of the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Huawei against ZTE, the Düsseldorf Regional Court has made a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the EuropeanUnion (CJEU) in Luxembourg. In this reference, the...
Competition Law and Personal Data: Preliminary Thoughts on a Complex Issue-
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Here is my new paper on this fascinating subject: With the advent of the Internet, and the development of new business models, companies increasingly hold large amounts of personal data about their employees and their customers. While there is a...
The German Federal Constitutional Court and EU (Competition) Law Basics
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According to a list of pending cases that was published last week, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht or BVerfG) will be considering a constitutional complaint filed by ThyssenKrupp. The complaint alleges that the Commi...
Competition Law and Personal Data: Preliminary Thoughts on a Complex Issue
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Here is the abstract and link to the paper I have co-authored with my colleague Monika Kuschewsky. With the advent of the Internet, and the development of new business models, companies increasingly hold large amounts of personal data about their...
Is it illegal to exclude illegal firms?
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In a recent judgment (Case C-68/12 Protimonopolný úrad Slovenskej republiky v Slovenská sporitel’ňa a.s.), the Court of Justice held that the fact that the undertaking that is being affected by an anticompetitive agreement might be operating il...
Third Time’s the Charm?: UPS/ TNT Prohibited
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After Olympic/Aegean and Deutsche Börse/NYSE, yesterday's decision on UPS/TNT Express is the third merger prohibition since 2010, when J. Almunia became the Commissioner for Competition. The EC’s competition concerns focused on the market for expr...
Searle Center conference on Technology Standards, Innovation and Market Coordination
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On February 7-8, I will participate in the above conference, which is organized by my friend Daniel Spulber at Northwestern University. Although the conference is on invitation only, the papers to be delivered can be dowloaded below. The theme of...
Ten Years of DG Competition Effort to Provide Guidance on the Application of Competition Rules to the Licensing of Standard-Essential Patents: Where Do We Stand?
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After a two-year silence on the subject, here is my new paper on EU competition law and standard-essential patents: One of the most intractable competition issues for the European Commission (the “Commission”) over the last ten years has been to.
Free vs. Google - Ad Blocking and Net neutrality
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On 3 January, France’s second largest internet service provider (“ISP”), Free, started blocking online adverting for its subscribers. This in itself did not come across as shocking, as this feature is already available to consumers (e.g., Adblo...
Individual fined for incomplete notification
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Imposing sanctions on individuals for competition law violations is common in a number of jusridictions worldwide but I had never heard of individual sanctions being imposed in merger cases. Yet, I just read that the Bundeskartellamt had imposed a
Almunia on State aid modernisation
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In a speech today at King's College London, Vice-President Almunia provided some insight into the Commission's effort to modernise EU State aid rules. He started by describing the overarching goals of the reform, explaining that "in times of shr...
Commission sends Statement of Objections to Samsung on potential misuse of standard-essential patents
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On 21 December 2012, the European Commission sent a Statement of Objections (SO) to Samsung. The Commission's preliminary view is that Samsung abused its dominant position by seeking injuntive relief against Apple based on its mobile phone standard-e...
Happy holidays
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The Antitrust Hotch Potch team is taking a few days off and will be back in early January. We wish you all happy holidays. In the meantime, if anyone feels like reading antitrust cases over the next few days, we...
Robert Bork (1927-2012)
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Robert Bork passed away on 19 December 2012 at the age of 85 . Among other things, he served as a professor at Yale Law School, as Solicitor General in the US Department of Justice as well as a judge...
