Antitrust refers to a field of economic policy and laws dealing with monopoly and monopolistic practices. Antitrust law or antitrust policy are terms primarily used in the United States, while in many other countries the terms competition law or policy are used. Some countries have utilized the phrases Fair
Trading or Antimonopoly law. The intellectual basis for antitrust economics or policy is the sub-field of industrial organization economics which addresses issues arising from the behaviour of firms operating under different market structure conditions and the effect this has on economic performance. Most antitrust or competition laws have provisions dealing with structure such as mergers, monopoly, dominant market position and concentration, as well as behaviour, such as collusion, price fixing, and predatory pricing.
Source: OECD
The Act on Combating the Unfair Use of Contractual Advantage in the Trade in Agricultural and Food Products (the “Act”) entered into force on July 12th, 2017. Its essential goal is to eliminate unfair market practices from every stage of the food product supply chain. The new legislation was to be (and still is) a…
The Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) announced on February 1, 2018, to launch a sector inquiry into online advertising (here). This in line with the FCO’s focus on competitive conditions in the digital economy and big data. The FCO follows the French competition authority that started a separate online advertising sector inquiry in 2016 and has…
The Polish competition authority applies the principle of in dubio pro reo in the case concerning a cartel on the domestic certification market (and refuses to use lie detecting devices) On 29 December 2017, the Polish competition authority – the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (the “OCCP President”) – penalised a…
The following item was prepared by my colleagues Jim Dinning and David Feldman In the annual Davies forecast of the year ahead for Canadian competition law, we discuss the top five issues and trends to watch for in Canadian competition law this year. 1. New Leadership at the Bureau and a Year of Transition 2018…
On 23 January 2018, Germany’s Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof – BGH) handed down its judgment on allegedly anti-competitive requests for preferential rebates and conditions by food retailers (case KVR 3/17 – not yet published). This is an important judgment as it removes a major roadblock to antitrust enforcement in the food retail sector in Germany,…
As authorities worldwide step up enforcement of their merger control rules, companies planning deals in 2018 must pay even closer attention to their obligations and conduct throughout the period from early planning up to final merger control clearance. We are seeing more authorities impose heavy fines for an increasingly wide range of pre-clearance conduct, with…
On 19 December 2017 the Federal Administrative Court issued three judgments reversing the sanctions against the producers Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bayer imposed by the Competition Commission which totaled in CHF 5.7 million. The court concludes that the non-binding price recommendations published by the three pharmaceutical companies did not restrict competition but rather prevented excessive…
Background This case concerns a dispute between Coty Germany GmbH, a supplier of luxury cosmetic products, and Parfümerie Akzente GmbH, an authorised retailer. Coty Germany, a subsidiary of the US parent company Coty Inc., sells luxury cosmetics in Germany through a selective distribution network of authorised distributors. Parfümerie Akzente is a longstanding authorised distributor for…
More than a year has passed since the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) completed its first investigations into the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. However, it has recently struck another blow yet again and, one should say, with renewed vigour. The first companies that fell under antitrust sanctions were Alcon and distributors (Alcon case). The AMCU passed…
On 4 November 2017, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the amendments to China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL). The amendments will take effect from 1 January 2018. This is the first time that the AUCL has been revised since its entry into force in 1993. As part of the amendments, the AUCL’s…
