On 6 December 2012, the EU Court of Justice handed down judgment in the long-running AstraZeneca litigation. Practitioners hoping for an opinion that tempered some of the more extreme dicta of the General Court found a more measured judgment. The Court upheld the General Court’s judgment in its entirety. But it refrains from endorsing the…
In contrast to e.g. the UK Office of Fair Trading, the European Commission so far has not applied UPP-type approaches in phase I merger enquiries. However, a Commission submission to the OECD earlier this year indicates that it is keeping its options open. This post discusses frequently asked questions regarding the concept of UPP and…
The Commission published the text of its most recent prohibition decision in Deutsche Boerse / NYSE Euronext. The Decision is lengthy and the Commission appears to have formulated a response to most arguments proffered by the parties. However, a review of the Decision brings to the fore a number of ways in which the Commission…
In November 2010, the Czech Antitrust Office handed down its first ever decision to penalise predatory pricing, dealing with the dominant operator of public passenger coach services between the two largest Czech cities, Praha and Brno. The decision to issue a fine was confirmed during administrative appeal proceedings but was reversed by the Administrative Court…
The EU’s General Court issued on 14 November two important judgments regarding the extent of the European Commission’s powers to dawn raid companies for suspected competition law infringements (Case T-135/09 Nexans v Commission and Case T-140/09 Prysmian v Commission). The Court held that the European Commission must precisely delimit the products concerned by a dawn…
The Romanian Competition Council (“RCC”) accepted the commitments undertaken by PROGAZ P&D SA in view of relieving the concerns regarding infringement of the antitrust rules by abuse of a dominant position on the local market of natural gas installations planning and execution and closed the related investigation.[1]Decision no. 50 of 05.09.2012 of the Romanian Competition…
In the context of antitrust and cartel investigations, electronic data or computer-generated information often has the highest evidential value and potentially the highest impact on the outcome of the investigation. For this reason, when conducting surprise inspections at the premises of a suspected undertaking, electronic data is often the first target of the Commission. Companies…
Almost two years into application of the new Croatian Competition Act (“Act”), the Croatian Competition Agency (“CCA“) has for the first time penalized undertakings involved in anticompetitive conduct. Under the previously applicable Competition Act (in force between 2003 and 2010), the CCA was authorized solely to establish a violation of competition law. A separate fining…
Over the last decade, the patent landscape has been dramatically altered by the rise of entities whose business model is to acquire significant patent portfolios and aggressively pursue license fees from businesses selling products that may infringe on some of those patents. Such companies are known as “non-practicing entities” (NPEs) or “patent assertion entities” (or,…
According to standard economic theory, unfettered free markets lead to an efficient allocation of resources. Importantly, this result is generally taken to hold only insofar as market failures are absent. One of these failures, market power, is defined as the ability to elevate prices above competitive levels for a significant period of time. Generally speaking,…
