CLIP of the month: when does strategic patenting by pharmaceutical companies become anti-competitive?
Podcast on developments relating to component-level SEP licensing
New year, new CMA dominance investigation. Francion Brooks & Emma Mackie discuss an unusual...
CJEU annuls Commission decision accepting Paramount commitments
Supreme Court ruling invites consideration of post-Brexit interpretation of restraints on...
A changing FRAND landscape?
Find out more on the CMA’s guidance to government on tech regulation proposals.
National Security and Investment Bill
Further to our earlier blog posts on the New Competition Tool and the Digital Markets Unit,...
Not the most favoured comparison site: CMA fines Compare The Market over contract clauses
The UK Supreme Court’s judgment in the combined cases of Unwired Planet v Huawei and...
Reform and the future of the Vertical Agreements Block Exemption
This month’s CLIP is an article by Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, Professor of Law at the London...
Essential Pharma’s essential drug? CMA opens investigation into withdrawal of supply of bipolar treatment
Are the proposals for digital markets regulation going to change competition law as we know...
CLIP of the month: The rise in anti-suit injunctions in global FRAND disputes
This month’s CLIP is the decision of the European Commission to begin a sector inquiry for...
UK Supreme Court approves global FRAND licences in Unwired Planet and Conversant appeals
Ofcom has revisited its existing ex ante regulatory powers in another area, the provision of...
Fortnite vs. Apple
The debate in FRAND and competition law about licensing component suppliers rather than end...
CLIP of the month: The role of competition law in addressing climate change
Pricing issues remain a hot topic for the competition authorities, as arguably now more than...
Simplicity or complexity? – A tale of two patent settlement investigations
On 1 July 2020, the CMA published the Final Report of the 'Online Platforms and Digital...
The Court of Appeal lets the CAT out of the costs bag…
On 23 June 2020, the German Supreme Court (the Bundesgerichtshof, or BGH) upheld the remedy...
‘Pay-for-delay’ agreements: further guidance from the Advocate General
This month’s CLIP is a response by Herb Hovenkamp to the American House Judiciary...
European Commission resurrects comfort letters to combat COVID-19
This month’s CLIP of the month is an article by Jorge Contreras, Professor of law at the...
COVID-19 and its impact on Competition Law for the UK pharma sector
A couple of years ago we wrote a number of blog posts about the complexity that the internet...
More Objects and Effects under Article 101 Case C-228/18 Gazdasagi Versenyhivatal (Hungarian Competition Authority) v Budapest Bank and others
This month’s Clip of the month is an article (and blog) by Pablo Ibanez Colomo about the...
Want to navigate the FRAND landscape? Bristows launches a free online database of judgments in the English Courts
This week, the French Competition Authority (Autorité de la Concurrence, ADLC) imposed its...
Excessive? Unfair? Court of Appeal reaffirms United Brands excessive pricing test
On 19 February, the European Commission unveiled its agenda for a “digital transformation...
Merchandising Monsters – European Commission imposes €14.3 million fine on NBCUniversal
For those who don’t make a practice of reading press releases from the US regulatory bodies,...
Competition between generics and originators – what’s the relevance of a patent? (Part II)
This month’s CLIP is a short economic paper looking at how a merger affects incentives on...
Competition between generics and originators – what’s the relevance of a patent?
The merger landscape is notoriously hard to predict but, on the heels of a 2019 in which,...
Searching for trouble? Assessing the CMA report on online platforms and digital advertising
On 21 October, the High Court gave judgment on jurisdiction in Vestel v HEVC Advance &...
CLIP of the month: Is a new framework needed to assess antitrust risk?
CLIP of the month is “Section 2 Mangled: FTC v. Qualcomm on the Duty to Deal, Price...
Licensing programme terms attract Commission scrutiny
Our current CLIP of the month is ‘A simple model of mergers and innovation’ by Giulio...
CLIP of the month: focussing on the UK generics industry
Last week the French Competition Authority ADLC– l’Autorité de la Concurrence (ADLC)–...
Interim measures are back – Broadcom faces EC probe
Last week the CMA announced that it had cleared Paypal’s takeover of iZettle, a rival in the...
Killer acquisitions and data access or divestment as a merger remedy
Within the past week, the European Commission has issued two new statements of objections on...
PanOptis takes on Apple, Vestel issues antitrust litigation against HEVC patent pool, injunction granted against ZyXEL
On 25 March the European Commission handed out a €12.5 million (£10.7 million) fine to...
CLIP of the month: The Bundeskartellamt’s Facebook Decision and the intersection of competition law and data protection
The curtain has come down on the long running Hollywood movie/pay-TV licencing saga.
Chancellor’s Spring Statement: Digital Advertising Market Study
This week Bristows is sponsoring, and I have the privilege to be speaking alongside fellow...
The General Court’s judgment in Krka – some welcome clarity over licensing in the context of patent settlements
For those of you with an interest in IP/tech issues, you may find the upcoming 3rd Annual...
CLIP of the month: Competition law and innovation – where do we stand?
In its judgment yesterday, the High Court rejected an application by Concordia to have a CMA...
Canal+ finds copyright is no match for the EU single market
The General Court has today handed down its judgment in the long-running Servier patent...
CLIP of the month: What is the best response to higher prices in the pharma sector?
In an important case on the intersection of IP and antitrust, the US Federal Trade Commission...
US District Court confirms that Qualcomm must offer RAND SEP licences to rival chipset manufacturers
On 29 October 2018, the government laid ‘The Competition (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit)...
CLIP of the month: Does orphan drug pricing pose an antitrust problem?
The keenly awaited appeal judgment in Unwired Planet v Huawei was handed down yesterday.
SEP holders’ guidelines on IoT /5G FRAND licensing
In its judgment of earlier this year, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) upheld...
Global FRAND issues unpicked in Japan Patent Office’s new licensing guidance
Entering into agreements that erect barriers to parallel exports between EU markets is...
CLIP of the month: Strengthening Buyer Power as a Solution to Platform Market Power?
Following up on our recent post about the big data concerns assessed by the Commission in the...
The cartelization of innovation – a new emissions scandal?
Back in May this year, the Court of Appeal sat for five days to hear Huawei’s appeal of...
BEIS notice on competition law in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit
In a judgment handed down on 7 September, the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) upheld...
Big Data? No antitrust problem for Apple/Shazam
Some months back, we reported on an initiative by the Dutch Council for Public Health and...
Concordia and the CMA – a drama in (at least) three parts
We reported a few months ago on the House of Lords Communications Select Committee’s...
Pharma stock management – nothing extraordinary in limiting parallel trade?
Last year, we speculated whether the European Commission might target pricing algorithms...
Coty gets green light for online platform ban
Following on from yesterday’s blog on the MasterCard / Visa decision, we’ve also taken a...
MasterCard and Visa MIFfed as the Court of Appeal considers two-sided markets, SCOTUS itself is two-sided (Part 1 – the UK)
The Commission’s November 2017 Communication on SEPs (on which we reported here) referred to...
Bienvenue à Bruxelles! Bristows’ Competition and Regulatory teams visit the new Continental Base
“The principal issue is excessive pricing, … the reason for our conclusion is that the...
FRAND in the UK (May 2018 edition): Unwired Planet appeal, Apple v Qualcomm
AG Wahl began his Opinion in MEO v Autoridade da Concorrência by noting that it presented the...
Advertising in the digital age – the future role for competition law
Last week, the European Commission confirmed that it had cleared the proposed merger between...
Race to publish rival SEP, FRAND Codes of Conduct: new CEN-CENELEC working groups established
On 8 March 2018, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) gave an initial judgment in the appeals...
The BKA’s Facebook investigation: new frontier or regulatory overreach?
This month’s CLIP comes from the Bundeskartellamt’s thought-provoking series of papers on...
The competition law issues of the CRISPR patent pool
Following cases in Italy, the UK and before the European Commission, the Danish authorities...
The chips are down! The Commission fines Qualcomm for abuse of dominance
Stephen Smith and Matthew Hunt review licensing commitments sufficient for Qualcomm to secure...
French competition authority fines pharma company for its anti-generic ‘commando’ sales tactics
In August last year, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it had...
USA v. UK – a united approach to FRAND? Comparing the new judgment in TCL v. Ericsson with Unwired Planet v. Huawei
The CMA has today issued a £1.71m fine against two laundry companies for market sharing....
Third-party platform bans justified for genuinely luxury brands
Following around a year of lobbying and intensive debate, the Commission has today (29...
Deciding on terms of privacy policies – what are the risks of anti-competitive collusion?
Shortly before becoming the new home of the EMA, the Netherlands piqued the interest of the...
EU reaches agreement to end unjustified geoblocking
The CMA has opened an unprecedented number of new investigations in the pharmaceutical sector...
Economical with the truth? When providing misleading information to authorities might be an object infringement
‘Product hopping’, or ‘evergreening’, are expressions used (by competition authorities...
Introducing On the Pulse – the Bristows life sciences microsite
In April this year we reported that the Commission had released aRoadmap towards a...
Laitenberger on the notions of fairness and consumer welfare in EU Competition Law
Last week the CJEU released its judgment on excessive pricing that could prove of interest to...
The CJEU’s Intel judgment – First thoughts and some predictions
On 19 May 2017 Apple issued a major claim against Qualcomm in the English Court. This is part...
Excessive Pricing: Aspen lose their appeal in Italy – and are in the Commission’s crosshairs
Sophie Lawrance explores Innovation and merger control
Luxury brands, third party platforms and EU competition law – guidance from AG Wahl
Patentees commonly litigate in Germany. The validity of a patent is considered separately from...
Antitrust authorities are increasingly interested in pricing algorithms
The CMA has accepted commitments from ATG Media, the largest provider of online auction sites...
Unwired Planet v Huawei: a new FRAND injunction
An announcement by the European Commission last week resolves an open question about its view...
Transparency may undermine online competition: Commission’s Final Report on the E-commerce Sector Inquiry
The next telecommunications standard, 5G, and the nascent Internet of Things (IoT), promise a...
Unwired Planet v Huawei: Is FRAND now a competition law free zone? Not so fast…
Mr Justice Birss has just handed down the first decision by a UK court on the ever...
EU Commission’s Microsoft/ LinkedIn Decision – watershed for competition and data?
There has been considerable debate over the last year or so about the potential...
Collusion in the online economy – new competition law traps for the unwary?
At the end of last week, the CMA sent a formal statement of objections to Actavis UK and...
Back to the future: the Commission opens e-commerce competition investigations
Amazon has offered commitments to the European Commission to end the antitrust investigation...
Patent licensing and antitrust – Qualcomm in the firing line
On 18 January, the FTC announced that Mallinckrodt ARD Inc. (formerly Questcor...
Compulsory Licencing: the Brave New World for (non-personal) data in Europe?
In the latest instalment of the pay-TV saga, the French pay-TV operator Canal Plus has asked...
The vexed question of the appropriate ‘royalty base’ for FRAND-based damages – the US Supreme Court declines to answer
The year is 2011. The Office of Fair Trading (the predecessor to the current Competition and...
We need to talk…about Pharmaceuticals and Standard Essential Patents
Our readers may be interested in two events next week at which Sophie Lawrance, one of...
Premier League scores in latest dispute with pub broadcasting football matches
We know it’s not strictly competition law or IP related but Competition and IP practitioners...
Resetting Competition Policy Frameworks
Pricing issues in the pharmaceutical industry have continued to keep competition authorities...
The European Commission’s E-commerce Conference
A recent judgment from Mr Justice Roth in the Patents Court highlights the importance of...
The privacy/ competition law overlap: new competition rules on big data?
Last week, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) released an Opinion on coherent...
Patent Licensing and the Internet of Things – a Solution?
Last week, the European Commission published its Preliminary Report in the e-commerce sector...
EU Court to rule on ability of luxury brand owners to control online distribution
On Friday 9 September 2016, I attended the International Conference on Competition and...
Connecting the DSM dots
The General Court of the EU has upheld the European Commission decision fining Lundbeck and a...
Proposed changes to the US Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property – a transatlantic perspective
Marketplace vendors had fixed prices by using and configuring “commercially-available...
This summer’s (not so) light reading – the CMA’s published Paroxetine decision (GSK/generics)
In this article in Competition Law Insight we consider how intellectual property rights and...
Brexit What it means for competition law Q, A
The European Commission announced that it has accepted the commitments offered by Paramount...
Brexit – what next? A competition law perspective
The European Commission has accepted legally binding commitments from the International Swaps...
Testing the patent pool waters
When Intellectual Ventures (IV), the world’s largest non-practising entity, sued Vodafone...
Time to modernise standards?
May 2016 was an important month for competition policy developments. We have reviewed the...
Qualcomm in the firing line again
For those of you who are interested in standardisation, a post about action by the Commission...
More on mythical creatures – FRAND and hold up revisited
Keeping a weather eye on competition and innovation
Recent pay-TV developments: the dawning of a new era?
The CMA has been slowly but surely opening a raft of new investigations in the pharma and...
UPDATE: International spring cleaning time to review those IPR Guidelines
From today the NHS is likely to significantly increase the number of contracts it advertises...
A relatively rare beast: CMA clearance of a pharmaceutical sector merger
A number of national competition agencies have recently been reviewing their IPR guidelines...
Competition law no bar to patent licence royalties
The Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has today published her initial findings on...
A week of standard setting conferences – Part II, the London Leg
The context for the first of two standards-related conferences this week was the launch of the...
Standards, standards everywhere
In a recent judgment, the High Court recognised that the rapid development of new products and...
Algorithmic agony? The perils of platform T&Cs
The CMA has fined a number of pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, for anti-competitive...
The Commission’s consultation on the IP Enforcement Directive – a competition as well as an IP issue
The German Competition Authority (BKA) has opened an investigation into Facebook “on...
The Commission’s 2016 Competition Enforcement Priorities: the Digital Economy and Standard Essential Patents
In an expansion of our usual repertoire, this post is taking a quick look at the relationship...
Is ‘big data’ the new frontier for competition law?
The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has recently opened a new investigation into...
New industry coalition established to promote FRAND licensing
In a useful addition to the pool of incremental guidance on RAND royalties, the US Court of...
6th Report on the Monitoring of Patents Settlements – déjà vu?
Last month the CMA published its evaluation of the OFT’s 2011 decision concerning Reckitt...
#EUhaveyoursay
The Commission has published its new internal market strategy. The areas that are likely to be...
CMA investigates pharmaceutical sector pricing issues
In the past few months, Nokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent has been approved by the EU...
Huawei v ZTE – three months on
Geo-blocking and online platforms are the next dip in the roller-coaster that is the...
“Everything online” including “everything copyright”
It seems that the CMA's opening of an investigation into Pfizer / Flynn may not be the only...
Huawei may not be the end of the story
Over the past few weeks DG Comp has continued to send information requests to numerous...
Interested in competition law developments in the pharma sector…?
Whilst the European Commission has shifted its focus to e-commerce and all things digital (see...
Product-hopping prohibited – Actavis’s most recent brush with US antitrust
A perhaps under-publicised resource on DG Comp’s website are its periodic Competition Policy...
Geo-blocking and the Single Digital Market: a new statement of objections
This is the second of two related posts looking at the recent CJEU ruling in Huawei v. ZTE. In...
CJEU judgment in Huawei v ZTE (Case C-130/13): theory and practice (1: Theory)
Those interested in all things e-commerce and competition will want to keep an eye out for the...
A sympathetic Australian approach to life cycle management and recent CMA guidance on Pharma sector rebates
Yesterday evening, together with a few colleagues, I attended a seminar on the European...
Non-challenging times…
In a novel judgment handed down yesterday, Arnold J granted an application for pre-action...
European Commission announces e-commerce sector inquiry
Last year, I had the opportunity to contribute in a small way to an interesting project...
UK Supreme Court ruling on standard of review for CAT appeals in 08x numbers case
On 26 March the Consumer Rights Act 2015 was enacted.
Sticky switching opens the way to over-stickering
Following Avantika’s excellent post on “most favoured nation” or “MFN” clauses,...
Fast track CAT injunctions – have your say on the draft rules
Over a year and a half after it was decided (a delay which this blog has bemoaned in the...
Companies ShrIEEEk at new SSO bylaws
Competition lawyers could be forgiven for raising a quizzical eyebrow at the judgment handed...
(Bio-)Similar views?
An intervention from a little further afield than the recent US and EU rumblings on FRAND...
Resolutions for innovation in 2015
Earlier this month the Commission published its 5th report on the monitoring of patent...
More on predatory innovation – and innovative Apples…
The recent Judgment of the US Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (‘CAFC’) in Ericsson...
With great patents, there must come great restraint (but a bit less in the EU than the US)
The CLIP Board is delighted to welcome its first guest blog post, which has been kindly...
The politics of SEPs – finding the third way to obtain/avoid injunctive relief?
While this blog usually grapples with serious matters relating to the interrelationship...
STOP PRESS – AG Opinion in Huawei v ZTE published today
Yesterday, Advocate General Bot delivered two opinions giving the thumbs up to the proposed...
A (belated) Happy Standards Day!
We’ve mentioned a few times on the blog the increasing global convergence of antitrust...
Commission Decision to increase cooperation with Member States on IP
It has been a little while since we have published on the Technology Transfer Block Exemption...
Huawei v ZTE: will the CJEU be first past the post on SEP policy….?
Sophie blogged a wee* while ago on the Opinion of AG Wahl in Cartes Bancaires, of interest...
“…hard cases make bad law …” – round table discussion on Intellectual Property and Competition
I wrote on this blog (here) about commitments offered by Nespresso to the French Competition...
Innovation and Intellectual Property – a controversy?”
Many of our pharma-themed blog posts have focused on the actions that European and US...
The CMA’s plan for IP
2007-09: European Commission investigates Qualcomm for possible abuse of a dominant position...
‘Care’-ful with know-how and trade marks
Some of you may remember that a couple of months ago I posted on this blog some thoughts about...
Fast track CAT injunctions
ZTE has this week announced that it has made a formal competition complaint to the European...
Competition law issues in commercial contracts
Patent litigation practitioners in the courts of England & Wales are not generally known for...
Competition law & IP licensing agreements
For those of you interested in having an overview of recent developments relating to the TMT...
Reckitt Benckiser reduces its competition law heartache in the UK / takes some of its own medicine
Reviewing the new TTBER and accompanying Guidelines in their first week in effect, two of us...
“Technological predation” – part II
Further to recent ramblings on the ‘Czech Spa’ case, I thought I’d quickly mention...
Predatory technology – a viable antitrust concept?
Following on from the Roma-branded Mobility Scooters case earlier this year, the OFT has...
University spin-out merger decision: lessons to be learned
Many AG opinions are just a forgettable ‘entremet’ between the General Court hors...
US judge questions illegality of seeking an injunction
The European Commission has announced that it has adopted a revised technology transfer block...
Pay-for-delay: an article on recent-ish developments
The outspoken FTC Commissioner, Joshua D. Wright, recently made a speech where he spoke out...
Collusion in the standard-setting context – are we likely to see claims in the EU?
A Czech spa provided guests with music, but without having entered into a licence with the...
Competition, innovation and IP – a modest proposal
Courtesy of our friend Daniela Ampollini of Trevisan Cuonzo, we have now seen an unofficial...
Global convergence on pharma deals close to patent expiry
Those of you following this case might be interested to read this post by Daniela Ampollini of...
Teva/Cephalon merger decision – no reason to nod off
The patent dispute between HTC and Nokia (which recently settled - days before the ITC was due...
Technology transfer licensing, Patents, TMT, Pharma
Last night, we held our eagerly awaited roundtable discussion: “Technology licensing:...
Last orders at the OFT…..
On 30 January 2014 Advocate-General Kolkott delivered her opinion in Kone AG and Others...
“Les génériques dangereuses”: denigration and other recent pharma sector competition issues in France
Google bought Motorola in 2012 and paid an astounding $12.5 billion. At the time of sale,...
Actavis leaves scope for dissent
Companies in sectors where IP and innovation are important often find themselves embroiled in...
Reckitt Benckiser still suffering competition law heartache in the UK
The Competition Commission (CC) today published its provisional decision on remedies to...
The OFT tackles restrictions on the online availability of medical devices
The European Commission announced today that it has launched a formal antitrust investigation...
New paper on ‘Injunctions for FRAND-pledged SEPs: the quest for an appropriate test of abuse under Article 102’
The team has written practice notes which explore some of the complexities that IP create for...
Online (r)evolution: Bosch boshed by the Bundeskartellamt
The application of competition law to online distribution models has been something of a theme...
French Competition Authority fines Schering-Plough for abuse of dominant position
Intellectual Ventures – arguably the world’s most infamous NPE with around 70,000 IP...
CC investigation: private motor insurance & MFNs
The ever controversial issue of the availability of injunctive relief for FRAND-encumbered...
The General Court dismissed appeal against Commission’s approval of Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype
On 5 December 2013, the US House of Representatives passed the Innovation Act (otherwise known...
The 4th Patent Settlement Monitoring Report – what’s new and what’s not?
Competition policy and its relationship with IP is the regulators’ topic of the moment. EU...
How efficient is the Commission at making decisions under Article 101 (3)?
In November 2013, Commissioner Almunia delivered a speech at the London School of Economics...
Another front in the telecoms ‘patent wars’: a novel type of antitrust complaint
The European Commission unconditionally cleared the proposed purchase of Nokia’s smartphone...
IBC Standards and Patents conference
A recent Chinese appeal court’s ruling is likely to have made quite an impression on...
EU authorities coordinate in bringing investigations against Amazon to a close
On 5 November, the High Court granted injunctions against Barclays in two curious cases...
Virgin v Zodiac – what implications for the pharma sector?
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now up and running, albeit in ‘shadow...
Alleged refusal to supply – when are measures against parallel trade abusive?
As the traditional quartet of the local butcher, baker, candlestick maker greengrocer and...
US eBooks judgment: a view from across the Atlantic
Pat Treacy discusses competition law issues …
