‘Product hopping’, or ‘evergreening’, are expressions used (by antitrust authorities and industry respectively) to describe strategies employed by pharmaceutical companies to protect sales of a successful drug on the verge of losing patent protection. For example, a pharmaceutical company might introduce a new formulation of the drug before it faces significant competition from a generic…
It is becoming increasingly common for companies to set prices for their products automatically using algorithms. One recent study found evidence of more than 500 sellers using algorithmic pricing on Amazon marketplace (see here). The Commission’s Preliminary Report on the E-commerce Sector Inquiry also reported use of automatic price adjustments (see paragraph 552). There are…
Introduction On a number of occasions the Court of Justice (CJEU) has been tasked with deciding how familiar concepts of competition law apply to novel facts. In Eturas (Case C-74/14, judgment of 21 January 2016), questions of how concerted practices should be considered in the online world were referred to the CJEU for a preliminary…
