Abuse of dominance

Anticompetitive business practices in which a dominant firm may engage in order to maintain or increase its position in the market. These business practices by the firm, not without controversy, may be considered as “abusive or improper exploitation” of monopolistic control of a market aimed at restricting competition. The term abuse of dominant position has been explicitly incorporated in competition legislation of various countries such as Canada, the EU and Germany. In the United States, the counterpart provisions would be those dealing with monopoly and attempts to monopolize or monopolization of a market.

Source: OECD

Abuse of dominance, As Efficient Competitor, European Commission, European Court of Justice, Guidance, Guidelines, Margin squeeze, Restriction by effect

(Norton Rose Fulbright, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

The European Commission (the Commission) has launched a project to codify EU law on the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to exclusionary abuses of dominant positions, such as exclusive dealing, tying and bundling, predatory pricing, refusals to supply and margin squeezes. The Commission published a…

Abuse of dominance, Advocate General, European Court of Justice, Ex ante regulation, Judicial review, Merger control, Merger notification, Merger Thresholds, Mergers

, , , , (White & Case)/ /Leave a comment

The long-awaited European Court of Justice’s judgment in Towercast confirmed that national competition authorities (and national courts) can apply abuse of dominance rules to mergers that did not trigger EU and national merger control thresholds and were not referred to the European Commission under Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation. However, uncertainties still remain….

Abuse of dominance, Anticompetitive agreements, China, Mergers

(Hogan Lovells, China)/ /Leave a comment

Introduction On 24 March 2023, China’s antitrust authority – the State Administration for Market Regulation (“SAMR”) – issued four regulations implementing the recently amended Anti-Monopoly Law (“AML”): Regulation Prohibiting Monopoly Agreements (“Agreements Regulation”); Regulation Prohibiting Conduct Abusing a Dominant Market Position (“Abuse of Dominance Regulation”); Regulation on the Review of Concentrations between Business Operators (“Merger…

Abuse of dominance, Amazon, As Efficient Competitor, Commitments, Discrimination, European Commission

(University of Copenhagen)/ /Leave a comment

For unknown reasons, DG COMP persists in hiding the jewels when it comes to discrimination cases. This covers BdKEP/Deutsche Post AG from 2004, where DG COMP established (recital 93) how Article 102 TFEU covers three forms of discrimination, two exclusionary and one exploitive. As explained later, these have been referred to as horizontal-, vertical-, and…

Abuse of dominance, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Court of Justice, European Union, Ex ante regulation, Hungary, Information exchange, Netherlands

(University Villanueva, Spain)/ /Leave a comment

On 13 March 2023, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate of The Netherlands published the first draft of its implementing regulation (the ‘Draft Bill’) subject to public consultation until the 10th of April, to attribute its national competition authority (ACM) with the power to monitor compliance with the DMA in its national territory. The…

Abuse of dominance, Czech Republic, Supply chain

(Schoenherr)/ /Leave a comment

Introduction Long before the Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain (the “Directive”), the Czech Republic had passed an Act on significant market power in the sale of agricultural and food products and its abuse (the “Act”). At the beginning of its effectiveness in 2010,…

Abuse of dominance, Advertising, Google, Killer acquisitions, Tying and Bundling, United States of America

(Leiden University & KU Leuven)/ /Leave a comment

* This entry is a re-post of the contributor’s CCM Blog post, find link here.   On 24 January 2023 the U.S. Department of Justice (‘DoJ’), joined by multiple U.S. States including California and New York, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google alleging that the “industry behemoth […] has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad…

Abuse of dominance, Apple, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Google, Japan, Market study, Self-preferencing

(Hirayama Law Offices)/ /Leave a comment

Summary The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) published a 157-page report on 9th February 2023 (see here the press release), focusing on issues in the market structure and the lack of competitive pressure in the markets of essential software for smartphones (mobile OS) and app distribution services, both of which Apple and Google mainly provide….

Abuse of dominance, Guidelines, KFTC, Online platforms, Platforms, Self-preferencing, South Korea

(Kyoto University)/ /Leave a comment

It would no longer be surprising to see competition or regulatory authorities blaming digital platforms for favouring their own services on their own platforms. In particular, in Europe, seeing the General Court’s Google decisions (see e.g., Johannes Persch’s blog posts on Shopping and Android) and the self-preferencing obligation of the Digital Markets Act (see, e.g.,…

Abuse of dominance, Advantage, As Efficient Competitor, Burden of Proof, Competition proceedings, Consumer welfare, Discrimination, Electricity, European Court of Justice, Italy, National competition authorities (NCAs), National court

(University of Brescia)/ /Leave a comment

Facts and court proceedings Before the start of the liberalization process in 1999 with Legislative Decree 79/1999 (“Decreto Bersani”), the Italian electricity market was run singlehandedly by the Ente Nazionale Energia Elettrica (Enel), born with the nationalization of electricity in 1962. As the former Italian legal monopolist, Enel was integrated into all stages of the…