CLIP of the month: Could patent pools help combat coronavirus?
European Commission resurrects comfort letters to combat COVID-19
With COVID-19 now a global problem, the life sciences industry is facing immense pressure and...
Disputes over FRAND licensing in the automotive sector shift up a gear
On 2 April 2020 the Court of Justice of the European Union handed down its judgment in 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 30 January 2020 the European Commission announced that it was fining NBCUniversal (and...
Transatlantic echoes: FTC and FDA focus on competition in biologics
The Judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Paroxetine...
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: FTC v. Qualcomm on the duty to deal, price squeezes, and exclusive dealing
Press reports last week show that the European Commission has been active in the sphere of...
CLIP of the month: A simple model of mergers and innovation
This month’s CLIP of the month is this Oxera report on the UK generics industry. This is an...
French Competition Authority saddles Bikeurope with €250,000 fine
Key case law on the interface between competition law and IP rights emerged from the IMS...
Killer acquisitions: the CMA and the iZettle/Paypal merger
Antitrust authorities have identified ‘killer’ acquisitions as being a particular issue in...
New Commission interventions target geo-blocking via technical measures and blocking of innovation
The dust has not quite yet settled on the Unwired Planet litigation saga, Huawei has applied...
Just (Don’t) Do It – Commission fines Nike €12.5 million for restricting cross-border sales
This month’s CLIP is a comment from Assistant Professor John Newman on the German...
Final credits roll on the Hollywood movies pay-TV saga
Presenting his Spring Statement this afternoon, Chancellor Philip Hammond welcomed the Furman...
OxFirst’s Third IP and Competition Forum: Creating the Missing Link in the Digital Economy
We reported on this blog about the General Court (GC)’s judgment in Servier on the day on...
3rd Annual W@Competition Conference
This month’s CLIP is an editorial in the Journal of European Competition Law and Practice...
High Court rejects application to discharge CMA search warrant
The EU General Court (GC) has rejected an appeal brought by Groupe Canal+ (a French pay-TV...
Partial annulment of Servier decision by the General Court – some good news for pharma innovators at last
Pricing issues in the pharmaceutical industry continue to keep European competition...
Maintaining competition in online advertising: the US FTC’s 1-800 Contacts decision
In California, Judge Koh has granted partial summary judgment in favour of the FTC against...
Brexit and Competition Law: CMA publishes guidance on its role in a “no-deal” scenario
In the USA, a rare or orphan disease is defined as affecting fewer than 200,000 people and...
Unwired Planet v Huawei: Court of Appeal upholds Birss J’s judgment
The Commission’s SEP Communication was designed to offer guidance on FRAND and SEP...
Polish Plant Protection Products: CJEU confirms Commission was right to reject investigation
We have previously reported on FRAND guidance from other jurisdictions outside of Europe, such...
Request to re-open Glaxo ‘dual pricing’ case rejected by General Court: The end of the road for challenges to dual pricing?
Each month we publish a ‘CLIP of the month’, a publication that we have found to be...
Amazon Marketplace seems to be the Commission’s next big data antitrust target
The cartelization of innovation – a new emissions scandal?
Summer FRAND developments: some big antitrust news to come
With Brexit fast approaching, the government has issued further technical notices that set out...
The Ping judgment – CAT confirms that internet sales ban is restrictive of competition ‘by object’
Big Data has been a focus for DG Competition for the last few years. In particular, the...
Competition law challenge to orphan drug prices in the Netherlands
Last week, Concordia International released a management report in which it announced the...
Online advertising – Government acknowledges challenges ahead for competition law
Pharmaceutical stock management – the brand-owner practice of limiting quantities sold to...
Commission considers pricing algorithms in fining consumer electronics manufacturers for RPM
The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt ruled last Thursday that Coty Germany’s ban on...
MasterCard and Visa MIFfed as the Court of Appeal considers two-sided markets, SCOTUS itself is two-sided (Part 2 – the USA)
Whilst the Court of Appeal’s judgment in MasterCard / Visa, and the SCOTUS Opinion in AmEx...
European Commission sets up SEP Licensing Expert Group
Last month, the entire Competition and Regulatory departments took the opportunity to tour our...
CAT judgment in Pfizer/Flynn: Was the CMA ‘unfair’ in its assessment of Pfizer and Flynn’s prices?
This week has seen the English Court of Appeal hear Huawei’s appeal of the FRAND and...
The CJEU guidance in MEO on price discrimination in licensing may also impact FRAND / SEP licences
The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications has published its final report following...
‘Baysanto’: EU merger clearance of the Bayer/Monsanto confirms continued attention to innovation markets
In October last year we reported on the difficulties that the Commission was facing in...
Depression delayed: CMA’s paroxetine pay-for-delay case heads to Luxembourg
At the end of 2017, the German competition authority (BKA) provisionally concluded that...
CLIP of the month: Competition restraints in online sales after Coty and Asics – what’s next?
CRISPR-Cas9 is heralded as a revolutionary gene editing technology that is regularly hitting...
Excessive pricing spreads to Denmark – a cautionary tale about exclusive licensing
The Commission has fined Qualcomm €997 million for abuse of dominance. The Commission found...
Licensing commitments sufficient for Qualcomm to secure NXP takeover green light
On 20 December 2017, the French competition authority, the Autorité de la Concurrence (ADLC)...
Online sales bans in the sports equipment sector: the CMA’s Ping decision
On 21 December 2017, Judge Selna of the US District Court for the Central District of...
In a froth: Trademark licensing fails to disguise anti-competitive market sharing arrangement
The Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) has today ruled that third-party...
Commission Communication on SEP Licensing – where has the Roadmap led?
Big data is the talk of the town in competition circles. But it is perhaps a more mundane...
Dutch Health Council’s proposal of compulsory licensing as solution to high pharma prices
On 20 November the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission reached an agreement to...
French Pharma – French Competition Authority launches new sector enquiry
One of the more intriguing Opinions to be given by an Advocate General recently came out in...
Product hopping: The competition law risks of launching new product formulations
Bristows has recently launched On the Pulse, a microsite offering legal analysis and practical...
SEPs, 5G and the IoT: where will the Commission land on use-based licensing?
Johannes Laitenberger (Director-General for Competition, European Commission) spoke last week...
Licensing of Latvian collecting society prompts CJEU to provide greater clarity on how to determine excessive pricing
Today’s Intel judgment from the Court of Justice does not strictly concern the Competition...
Apple’s battle with Qualcomm spreads to the UK
Last year we reported the Italian’s take on excessive pricing (here), where South African...
Innovation and merger control
The Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) has today handed down Advocate General...
A FRAND torpedo? An update on Vodafone v Intellectual Ventures
A few months ago, we considered whether pricing algorithms might be the European...
Online auction commitments demonstrate digital markets are central to CMA’s priorities
Mr Justice Birss has once again broken new legal ground by granting what he has termed a...
The Commission steps into the excessive pricing arena
On 10 May 2017 the European Commission published its Final Report on the E-commerce Sector...
Patent licensing: 5G & the Internet of Things
It has been two weeks since Mr Justice Birss handed down his latest judgment in Unwired Planet...
Unwired Planet v Huawei: UK High Court determines FRAND licence rate
On 6 December 2016, the European Commission approved the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft,...
Will pricing algorithms be the European Commission’s next antitrust target?
We reported last year on the Eturas decision, in which the Court of Justice ruled that...
Pay-for-delay focus on steroids
True to its current focus on all things digital, the European Commission has recently...
Amazon’s E-Books antitrust saga – War now Peace?
Ten years after the European Commission opened an investigation into Qualcomm's royalties for...
FTC settles abusive acquisition of pharma licensing rights
The Commission has published its Data Economy Package for non-personal data*, which is the...
A decision of Paramount importance to independent film financing…?
Apple and Samsung have been engaged in litigation in the USA since 2011 over the issue of...
When the price isn’t right – CMA fines Pfizer / Flynn for excessive pricing
At the end of last month, Commissioner Vestager gave a speech at the Chillin’ Competition...
Hear it here first – competition law updates…
The ever-increasing amount of money tied up in TV deals for Premier League football perhaps...
High Court Rules in Article 50 Case
Earlier this month, the GSMA – an association representing various mobile operators –...
Excessive pricing: the Italian version
On 6 October, the Commission held a conference on its Preliminary Findings of the E-commerce...
Competition defences, patent litigation and costs…
On Thursday 29 September, at a Conference organised by the EDPS and BEUC, Commissioner...
The privacy/ competition law overlap: co-operation between enforcement agencies?
The Internet of Things (IoT) – a term used to describe the interconnectivity of electronic...
E-Commerce Sector Inquiry: Digital Content
Following a dispute in Germany between perfume and cosmetics manufacturer Coty and one of its...
Competition and Regulation in Digital Markets
European Commission releases proposals on copyright and telecoms as part of Digital Single...
Breaking news – General Court confirms Lundbeck decision and fine
Just over a week ago, the US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s...
Online poster seller in the frame for algorithm-centred price-fixing cartel
Some 6 months after issuing its infringement decision against GSK and a number of generic...
Competition policy v IP: striking a balance is a tricky exercise
As the dust begins to settle on the momentous events that unfolded in the early hours of...
That’s a wrap! The European Commission accepts Paramount’s pay-TV commitments
What next for Brexit? Sophie Lawrance gives a perspective on competition law
FRAND in Finance
Demonstrating that life goes on outside of Brexit, the European Commission has opened an...
Vodafone v Intellectual Ventures – Is a new front about to open in the FRAND wars?
As part of its Single Market Strategy, the Commission has announced that it will take steps to...
May Day! Competition policy: trade war by other means?
Qualcomm, the largest manufacturer of baseband chipsets for mobile phones, has recently found...
The Commission has seen the future and it is standardised!
Those of you who are interested in FRAND and standardisation issues will, I hope, have read...
Keeping a weather eye on competition and innovation
As part of the European Commission’s ongoing pay-TV investigation, it was announced last...
The CMA still has pharma and medical devices in its sights
The article summarises the most notable new guidance in the Canadian guidelines – namely in...
The NHS opens up to increased competition
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that it hasdecided not to refer the...
International spring cleaning: time to review those IPR guidelines…
This arose from a disputed arbitration award between Genentech and Sanofi-Aventis, and...
Digital Single Market – geo-blocking of digital content
Following up on Sophie’s recent blog, it was my pleasure to be the Bristows’ attendee at...
A week of standard setting conferences – part 1: FRAND, hold-up and other mythical creatures
Two conferences take place this week on the ever-hot topic of standards, SEPs and FRAND...
New technology and competition law – mapping the way
The rise of machine learning gives rise to knotty legal problems, whether these relate to how...
CMA’s mood boosted over fines for anti-depressant
In December 2015, the European Commission launched a public consultation on whether Directive...
Germany’s competition probe into Facebook’s T&Cs, precedent or outlier?
Margrethe Vestager, the European Competition Commissioner, has set out DG Competition’s...
Why a Spanish state aid decision is making EU governments nervous
Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commissioner, addressed Munich’s zeitgeist-setting...
Loyal to investigating pharma product discounts? – New CMA investigation
the licensing of standard essential patents (“SEPs”) on fair, reasonable, and...
US Court guidance on principles to apply for RAND royalty calculations
Last week the Commission published its 6th report on the monitoring of patent settlements,...
Approaches to Drugs Going Off-Patent: Naughty or NICE?
"The Internet is the oxygen of our digital economy and society. We are more and more...
Analogue taxis and hotels beware! The EU Internal Market Strategy is published
On 26 June 2015, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the closure of its...
Nokia / Alcatel-Lucent’s SEP portfolio: A tale of two mergers
Three months have gone by since the Huawei v ZTE judgment. Having considered the judgment on...
Online platforms hold on tight
On 9 October 2015, the European Commission published its clearance decision in relation to the...
Competition law as panacea for high prices?
On 11 September 2015 the Antitrust Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced in a speech at...
No rest for the Commission
If you are interested in competition law developments in the pharma sector, it’s still not...
Flynn, Pfizer and Pharma in the Frame
Interim mandatory relief to compel a company to continue doing something it wanted to stop...
Digital markets, DG Comp’s policy on data / privacy and some crystal-ball gazing
Last week, the European Commission made concrete moves which it thinks will help it to deliver...
CJEU judgment in Huawei v ZTE (Case C-130/13): theory and practice (2: Practice)
Judicial desk-clearing at the Court of Justice before the 2015 summer recess included the...
The unseen risks of e-commerce – a timely AG opinion on technical measures for breaching the competition rules
Our new CLIP of the month comes from one of the antitrust blogs recommended on our sidebar. A...
The e-Commerce sector inquiry gets under way
The seminar scheduled for 17 June has been postponed as on 16 June Rosemary Choueka, a partner...
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. The Act will bring about substantive...
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...
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...
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 notl
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 …
