On 15 May 2012, Advocate-General Mazák delivered his long awaited Opinion to the European Court of Justice in the long-running AstraZeneca litigation. Practitioners hoping for an opinion that tempered some of the more extreme dicta of the General Court were to be disappointed. Advocate-General Mazák recommended that the General Court’s judgment be upheld in its…
On 18 May 2012, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court (‘Shanghai Court’) dismissed allegations that Johnson & Johnson Medical (China) Ltd. and its Shanghai branch had set a minimum resale price in beach of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (‘AML’) and rejected the plaintiff’s claim of damages of CNY 14.4 million (‘J&J RPM case’). It is…
At the end of last week, the European Competition Network (“ECN”) published a report on the competition law enforcement and market monitoring activities by the European competition authorities in the food sector. The report is an important reminder of the fact that at both the European and national level the EU food sector has been…
Cross-border antitrust enforcement issues are back on the agenda. The recent Toshiba judgment of the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) has confirmed a number of principles governing the network enforcement system set forth in the EU by Regulation 1/2003. Recent national decisions involving the same companies and/or closely related sectors (e.g., the flour milling industry)…
(1) Significant changes to the Polish Competition Law are on the way. One could probably not imagine a better case for a debut in this blog. The Polish Competition Authority, or PCA (the President of the Office for Protection of Competition and Consumers), revealed last week details of the awaited proposal of far-reaching changes to…
On 19 May 2012, China’s Ministry of Commerce (‘MOFCOM’) announced its conditional clearance decision on the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google, which removed the last hurdle for the USD12.5 billion vertical deal. The MOFCOM is the only antitrust authority to impose remedies on its clearance of the transaction. The US Department of Justice, the…
Everybody at America Movil (”AM”) – and especially its owner, Mr.Carlos Slim – should have welcomed with a sense of relief the (somehow unexpected) turn in the saga which started last year when the Mexican Federal Competition Commission (“CFC”) hit AM’ mobile telephony unit Telcel with the largest fine in the history of Mexico: almost…
The feud between the Chinese Internet companies Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Qihoo 360’) and Tencent Inc. (‘Tencent’) has been simmering for nearly two years. This article spotlights the facts and major issues of the dispute. The Facts Tencent runs QQ, the most popular instant messaging (‘IM’) service in the mainland China with over 700…
A recent CC decision, Stericycle/Ecowaste Southwest, in which it prohibited a completed merger and required the divestment of the acquired business, is a salutary reminder to companies that do not wait for merger clearance before completing their transaction.
The discussion on the merit and feasibility of a possible application of Behavioural Economics in Competition Law and Policy has been fierce, particularly so in the context of US Antitrust Law. The fundamental assumption of Behavioural Economics lies in the recognition that human decision making is vulnerable and subject to biases. So-called neo-classical economic models…
