After the rumor mill had been bubbling for weeks in advance, it became official at the end of July 2023: the European Commission announced on its website the initiation of official antitrust proceedings against the US software giant Microsoft due to possible anti-competitive behaviour in relation to Microsoft Teams. The legal background of the EU…

On 8 November 2022, the European Commission launched a public consultation on its draft revised Market Definition Notice. The new Notice provides detailed explanatory guidance based on the recent case law of the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. It takes into account the latest market developments, in particular, competition on non-price elements…

In the last edition of the International Law Talk Podcast, I had the pleasure to interview Jay Modrall on the Illumina/Grail saga. Jay talks us through the whole case with all its interesting aspects: external and internal dimensions, article 22 referrals, gun-jumping, phase II, court proceedings, substantive issues with competition innovation and much more. Listen…

The newest episode of the competition edition of the International Law Talk Podcast focuses on the revival of the Dutch clause and other current issues of merger control. For this highly topical issue, I interviewed merger control star Tilman Kuhn from White & Case. Earlier this year, the European Commission encouraged Member States to use…

On February 26, 2019, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”) announced in its official press release that, as of February 27, 2019, a new set of standards for reviewing mergers in R&D-intensive industries and those involving “big data” will be introduced in the Merger Review Guideline (“Amended Guideline”).  The Amended Guideline marks one of the…

Today’s decision imposes a record fine of €4.34 billion on Google. In such an innovative and competitive industry, a decision and fine on this scale sends the wrong message. This post argues there is no obvious foreclosure, explains why Microsoft/WMP is an inadequate precedent (though Microsoft/Skype, in contrast, is directly on point), and asks whether…

With the exponential growth of technological advancement, our legal, social and economic systems need to respond promptly to creative incentives for disruptive innovators in the marketplace. In a speech delivered in February 2018, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford of the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division advocated that “those countries that have designed their…

The Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) has published a background paper “Innovation – Challenges for the Antitrust Law Practice” in October 2017. It covers possible innovation aspects across different antitrust law areas, with a focus on merger control. The paper is a valuable contribution to the debate on innovation. It is an agency paper, so it…