The Competition Commission of India (hereinafter ‘Commission’) has recently passed an order under Section 26(2) of the Competition Act, 2002 (hereinafter ‘Act’), wherein it has held that there exists no prima facie case against drivers of cab aggregator for involvement of cartel activity/conduct through Ola/Uber’s platform. In Samir Agrawal v ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd[1], the…
Introduction The Supreme Court of India in its order dated 15 January, 2019 ratified the power of the Office of Director General (DG), i.e., the investigating arm of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to conduct ‘search and seizure’ operations. This order comes in light of a protracted dispute with JCB India Private Limited (JCB)….
We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal includes the following contributions: Michael Albers, Achieving Competitive Neutrality Step-By-Step States are not only rule makers, they also are purchasers and often also suppliers of goods and services. However, the state is not a purchaser or supplier like any other. It…
Gun-jumping is a “hot topic” and increasingly on the radar of competition authorities in Europe and across the globe. As part of the OECD roundtable discussions, the European Union (and a number of other countries) recently submitted a note on the suspensory effects of merger notifications and gun-jumping (Article 7 of the EU Merger Regulation…
On December 17, 2018, the European Commission (EC) imposed on the clothing company Guess a hefty penalty of EUR 40 million for allegedly severe restrictions relating to the online sales activities of its authorized distributors. The full text of the Decision was published by the EC on January 25, 2019. While the substance of the…
On February 7, 2019, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) issued its long-awaited decision in the Facebook case, see press release and background paper in English here. It qualifies Facebook’s current practice of collecting and matching data of its users from third-party services/websites, including on What’sApp and Instagram, without explicit consent as an abuse of dominance. Facebook…
Antitrust enforcers are good at regularly reminding the competition law community that the various forms of abuse of dominance listed in Article 102 TFEU are not exhaustive. Indeed, the idea of what conduct falls outside “competition on the merits” is ever evolving. And this can make it difficult for practitioners to set clear lines on…
Exhaustion doctrine and parallel imports Parallel imports, Intellectual Property (“IP”) protection and its correlation with antimonopoly regulation is one of the most discussed topicsin the Russian Federation for the past 15 years. In general, the issue of parallel imports is closely associated with the exhaustion doctrine (that is, once a product protected by IP has…
CMA Brexit Draft Guidance On 28 January 2019 the UK Competition and Markets Authority (‘CMA’) issued draft guidance on the effects of any no-deal Brexit on the CMA’s functions and its enforcement approach. This guidance has been made more urgent by the continuing UK political divisions that have plagued the Brexit process and which could…
After almost three years of investigation, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (“BCPC”) has issued a Statement of Objections against in total 24 Bulgarian undertakings for bid-rigging in public procurement procedures under the National Program for Energy Efficiency of Multifamily Residential Buildings (“Energy Efficiency Program”). The bid-rigging was considered a breach of Article 15…
