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, Interim measures, National competition authorities (NCAs), Patent settlements, Spain

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On 21 October 2022 the Spanish CNMC imposed a fine of 38.9 million EUR on MERCK SHARP & DOHME DE ESPAÑA, S.A. and its parent company MSD HUMAN HEALTH HOLDING, B.V. (hereafter jointly ‘MSD’) for abusive practices in the Spanish market of contraceptive rings. Their breach consisted in having made baseless court claims with the…

Abuse of dominance, Advocate General, European Court of Justice, Four-to-three Merger, General Court of the European Union, Guidelines, Horizontal, Judicial review, Merger control, Merger notification, Merger Thresholds

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Advocate General Kokott has found [1] that the General Court erred in law in requiring the European Commission to show anti-competitive effects of a merger with “strong probability” and that the scope of its judicial review was overly broad, notably in relation to economic evidence.   Key takeaways This case will give the Court of…

Abuse of dominance, Digital, Digital competition, Digital economy, Türkiye

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Introduction This blog post will give an overview of the draft amendment (the “Draft Amendment”) to Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (the “Law No. 4054”). The key points of the Draft Amendment concern: Introducing definitions of core platform services into Law No. 4054 and allowing the possibility to introduce regulations on the…

Abuse of dominance, Advocate General, European Court of Justice, European Union, Merger control, Merger Thresholds, Mergers

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Advocate General Juliane Kokott has proposed that the EU Court of Justice should find that competition authorities have the power to apply Article 102 TFEU to corporate transactions that are not reportable and test under that provision whether the transaction as such constitutes an abuse of a dominant position. However, a competition authority cannot in…

Abuse of dominance, Advocate General, European Court of Justice, Facebook, Privacy

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On 20 September 2022, Advocate General Rantos delivers his Opinion on the much-awaited Case C-252/21 (Meta Platforms v. Bundeskartellamt). Bearing in mind the Opinion intends to pave the way for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the interpretation of the GDPR, the text resonates with competition law and its interpretation in the display online…

Abuse of dominance, Advantage, Anticompetitive agreements, As Efficient Competitor, Burden of Proof, European Commission, Fines, General Court of the European Union, Google, Market definition, Tying and Bundling

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The long-awaited Google Android decision is out (see the press release here or the full text here). The General Court has dismissed Google’s action almost in its entirety, slightly reducing the record fine from 4.343 billion euros to (still a record) 4.125 billion euros. This post gives a very first overview of the judgment and…

Abuse of dominance, Cartels, Commitments, Competition law, India, Leniency, Merger control, Settlement

(Lakshmikumaran and Sridharan)/ /Leave a comment

The Competition (Amendment) Bill (‘Bill’) was first published for public consultation in February 2020 and it is only on 5 August 2022 that it has finally been tabled before the Indian Parliament. The Bill is a concerted effort to harmonize competition law with the evolving realities of businesses today. The Bill proposes to amend both…

Abuse of dominance, Collective Redress, Excessive pricing, Israel

(Elbert, Nazaretsky, Rakov & Co)/ /Leave a comment

At the end of July, the Supreme Court of Israel issued a judgment giving local consumers the right to submit class-action suits against dominant companies in case of exorbitantly high prices.   Background The dominant company at stake, Central Bottling, deals with the production, marketing and distribution of brands of the global Coca-Cola Company. This…

Abuse of dominance, Amazon, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Commission, European Union, National competition authorities (NCAs), Ne bis in idem

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The final text of the DMA, after the Council’s final approval last 18th July, opened up, yet again, speculation on its enforcement. Although the Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton promptly confirmed that DG Connect would be the Directorate to apply and oversee the compliance of the DMA’s rules and obligations, several questions still…

Abuse of dominance, Arbitration, Germany, Sport

(Rosenstein & Rolf & Frohoff)/ /Leave a comment

Background More than 13 years ago, speed skater Claudia Pechstein had an abnormal blood sample, which she had to give as part of a doping control. She was subsequently banned in 2009 by the International Skating Union (ISU) for two years. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) confirmed this ban in 2009. According to…