On 21st December 2012, the Supreme Court granted permission to Morgan Crucible to appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal, delivered in July, concerning the time limits for bringing follow-on claims in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). Court of Appeal’s Judgment By its judgment the Court of Appeal shed light on the limitation…
In the UK competition world, it’s been the season for the god of quirks and small things. This has been a lot of fun. However, sadly we’re soon going to have to sober up and look at what lies beneath. But first let’s look at the quirks and small things. Towards the end of last…
There have been two key recent developments in the U.S. relating to the legal dispute over patent settlements including so-called “reverse payments.” First, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review an Eleventh Circuit decision dismissing a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenging a patent settlement. Second, a district court in New…
Australia has a statute-based access regime – Part IIIA of the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (CCA). The Commonwealth has recently announced a comprehensive review (Inquiry) of Part IIIA by the Productivity Commission (Commission). The Inquiry’s terms of reference were released on the 25 October 2012 and provide a very broad scope for…
My U.S. colleagues Lee van Voorhis and Brian Rafkin wrote an excellent client alert on the Bosch case and I asked them to prepare the following short summary for the Kluwer readership: On November 26, 2012, the FTC and Robert Bosch GmbH entered into a Consent Agreement that resolved the FTC’s inquiry into Bosch’s $1…
On 19 November 2012, the OFT appointed Lee Craddock, a former police officer and case manager at the Serious Fraud Office, as Director of Investigations and Criminal Enforcement. His appointment follows the disastrous handling of the criminal price fixing case against British Airways (BA) executives in 2010, one of only two prosecutions of the cartel…
Right now, the leitmotif in the competition world is the anger of the ordinary citizen. You thought this was an arena dominated by sober minded analysts, regulators and business executives? Think again. Take, for instance, the investigation into Britain’s retail road fuel industry – worth about £32bn – currently being conducted by the UK’s Office…
After a long period of political deadlock, the Belgian Government is finally moving the reform of the Belgian Competition Authority to the top of its priority list. At the heart of the political battle is the old question what or whom the Authority should seek to protect: the competitive process or the end consumer? Reforms…
In early July this year, the UK’s specialist competition court, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (“CAT”), adopted a judgment (“Judgment”) in which it awarded a claimant (2 Travel) exemplary damages in relation to predatory pricing abuses engaged in by its dominant rival, Cardiff Bus.[1]2 Travel Group PLC (in liquidation) v Cardiff City Transport Services Limited {2012}…
On 16 July 2012, a U.S. appeals court issued a decision holding that pharmaceutical patent settlements that restrict generic entry and contain a payment to the generic company are presumptively unlawful under the U.S. antitrust laws. The decision is a major victory for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s view of pharmaceutical patent settlements with so-called…
