CLIP of the month: The rise in anti-suit injunctions in global FRAND disputes
Helicopter overview of the proposals for digital markets regulation (competition law perspective)
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 (see here) in...
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...
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 (which we...
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...
Rosemary Choueka
I had the privilege last week of taking part in a conference on the subject of Litigation and...
Try before you buy: pre-action disclosure of licences
Everything Online is the focus of the European Commission’s latest sector inquiry announced...
New DG Connect Guidelines on interoperability information – shedding some light on the vexed question of IP valuation
A rare foray by the UK Supreme Court into telecoms regulation provides a fascinating insight...
Enacted: Consumer Rights Act 2015
Lord Justice Floyd has had occasion recently to remind us of the re-packaging/re-labelling...
German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) decision in HRS (online hotel booking)
6 February saw a new consultation on a draft set of new rules of procedure for the...
The published Lundbeck decision – first impressions (with some facts, a little law and three remarkable points)
BOLD FRAND statements seem to be the order of the year. The IEEE Board of Governorshas just...
Warner-Lambert/Actavis – Competition Law Insights
Towards the end of last year, I contributed a couple of articles to Bristows’ Biotech...
Chinese MIIT identifies basis for a FRAND royalty rate
This blog on the competition law/IP Interface has had an interest in how competition...
The Commission’s 5th report on patent settlements – a pretty picture?
More on predatory innovation
SEPs and FRAND: The calculation of RAND royalties in the US – incremental guidance
In a first superhero-related post on this blog, we note with interest that the US per se rule...
Most-favoured-nation clauses in e-commerce: a guest economist’s view!
The IP/competition interface was in the spotlight at the Court of Justice yesterday. The...
A barrel of laughs…..
The Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) has this morning published Advocate...
Europe’s Unitary Patent system draws one step nearer…
14 October marked World Standards Day, to celebrate the role of standards in developing...
Indian competition authority gets in on the IP action
On 16 September 2014, the Commission published a decision to establish a group of experts on...
Non-challenging reading for the weekend
The Huawei v ZTE CJEU (C-170/13) oral hearing took place on 11 September 2014.
The CJEU serves up a little common sense in Cartes Bancaires?
As you may have gathered by now, on this blog we are a little obsessed by the topic of...
Nespresso finalises its competition commitments in France – but at what price for innovation?
Earlier this year I posted a blog relating to competition innovation and intellectual...
Brazil joins the ‘pay-for-delay’ party
On 1 April 2014, on the first day of its operation, the CMA published its Annual Plan 2014/15....
Year of the Phoenix (aka EU/US competition cases reigniting in China)
Recent developments (in particular the Motorola / Samsung decisions relating to the use of...
Competition, innovation and DG Comp – in the mainstream press (or at least the Wall Street Journal)
Earlier this month, I attended an interesting lecture at the Law Society given by Mr Justice...
ZTE files competition complaint against Vringo with the European Commission
Rosemary Choueka recently recorded a webinar on general competition law issues in commercial...
Bifurcation at the UPC – competition policy squeezes and the scope for trolls
Following on from yesterday’s post, I recently recorded another webinar for MBL which will...
Recent developments in the TMT sector and competition law
Reckitt Benckiser has agreed to settle some more of the follow on claims it is facing since...
The revised technology transfer regime: is there more to patents than their validity?
It seems that my recent post on “predatory technology / innovation” has touched a nerve.
Another collecting society has competition law concerns…
A case announced in the US earlier this month could have been designed to tick as many...
Online advertising restrictions in the spotlight again
University spin-out merger decision: lessons to be learned
Object restrictions on the menu
The FTC Commissioner Wright’s viewpoint has recently been echoed by Paul Michel, a former...
BREAKING NEWS – New EU Technology Transfer Regulation and Guidelines
Those of you who are following developments in the Commission’s ‘pay-for-delay’...
The FRAND debate: is the tide turning?
I was interested to read elsewhere in the blogosphere about a current US antitrust case...
Five interesting things you might not have spotted about Case C-351/12, OSA (AKA the “Czech Spa” case)
Competition, innovation and IP – a modest proposal
Divisive divisionals – more on the Consiglio di Stato Pfizer judgment
I have noticed a couple of recent developments which seem indicative of increasing global...
Consiglio di Stato reinstates Pfizer €10.7 million Xalatan/latanoprost fine
Sophie Lawrance explores Teva / Cephalon merger decision – no reason to nod off.
HTC v Nokia (UK) – no case for exhaustion….
Last night, we held our eagerly awaited roundtable discussion: “Technology licensing:...
Technology licensing: adapting to the EU’s new regime – update
Of particular interest to us UK based competition lawyers, today is the last day of trading...
Elevated liability for cartelists?
Last year the French Competition Authority (FCA) issued a decision fining Sanofi-Aventis for...
Smart tactics in the smartphone war?
I noted with interest that the long-standing differences of opinion between US District Courts...
Litigation update
In 2010, the OFT fined Reckitt Benckiser £10.2 million for abusing a dominant position,...
Developments in the CC’s private healthcare market investigation in the UK
In August 2013, the OFT issued its decision in the Roma-branded Mobility Scooters case. This...
Territorial licensing in the spotlight (again)
For those particularly interested in the current industry debate about when it can be abusive...
Practice notes to note …
Following on from Pat’s post, the German competition authority on 23 December closed its...
On line (r)evolution? The prospects for selective distribution in an internet future
The pharmaceutical sector has been the subject of considerable scrutiny in France following...
Find a Patent: Intellectual Venture’s searchable portfolio
E-commerce businesses, motor-related or otherwise, should take a look at the discussion of MFN...
A step closer to consensus on the availability of injunctive relief for an SEP?
The General Court dismissed appeal against Commission’s approval of Microsoft’s...
Tough times ahead for patent trolls in the US as Innovation Act is passed by House of Representatives
The 4th annual report on the Commission’s pharma patent monitoring exercise
Almunia’s speech
Prof Whish gave a typically well-argued presentation designed to provoke the rehabilitation of...
Commission turns its attention to online sales
An NPE, Cascades, has accused a group of handset manufacturers of entering into a collective...
The Commission clears Microsoft/Nokia merger
At the IBC Standards and Patent Conference in London on Wednesday (4 December) there were...
China has its say in the global F/RAND and SEP licensing debate
Given all that’s been happening on the competition/IP interface in recent months (and...
High Court grants injunctions against Barclays in a non-FRAND competition case
Could the Supreme Court’s judgment lead to preliminary injunctions becoming a routine...
Here cometh the CMA …
A recent High Court decision clarifies the circumstances in which the Court will compel...
Every little bit helps: with luck, the new groceries code adjudicator will effect real change
In July 2013, District Court Judge Denise Cote handed down a detailed judgment finding that...
