Unfair trading practices

App stores, Apple, Digital competition, Digital economy, Digital markets, Digital Markets Act, European Commission, Fines, Proportionality, Unfair trading practices

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After almost three years since the Commission sent Apple its statement of objections, which was significantly trimmed down, the Commission reached a finding of abuse for which it imposed a whopping fine of 1.8 billion euros. Alongside this case, Apple was also involved in an almost identical case running parallel in the Netherlands, with similar…

Abuse of dominance, Commitments, Effects-based, European Commission, European Union, Investigations, Market definition, Tying and Bundling, Unfair trading practices

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Factual background During the summer of 2020, news came out about a claim made by Slack against Microsoft for abusing its dominance by tying Teams to the Microsoft and Office 365 software packages. The claim at the time was that Microsoft had been forcing millions of users to install Teams and denied them the possibility…

European Union, Unfair trading practices

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A fragmented legal landscape In April 2018, the European Commission revealed a proposal for a directive on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the food supply chain. The proposal comes in response to concerns about power imbalances in the food supply chain – an issue which has been in the eyes of competition authorities…