Introduction

AG Wahl began his Opinion in MEO v Autoridade da Concorrência by noting that it presented the CJEU with an opportunity to clarify the law on differential pricing. Under Article 102(c) TFEU it can be an abuse for a dominant undertaking to apply “dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage”. Discrimination has always been a tricky issue under Article 102 (it is one of relatively few competition issues to have received a thorough discussion by the English Court of Appeal – see British Horseracing Board, paragraphs 265-278) and it has never been entirely clear to what extent the EU authorities consider that the practice of price differentiation necessarily results in a finding of competitive disadvantage, or how much disadvantage is required to infringe Article 102.

Price differentiation is a topical issue. The increasing use of pricing algorithms offers the potential for companies to engage in ‘personalised’ pricing on a mass scale, offering different prices to different consumers based on an algorithmic assessment of the highest price each individual is likely to pay. But they may also facilitate anti-competitive price coordination and so could give rise to concerns (see here and here).

Similarly, as the Internet of Things and 5G lead to new market entrants requiring SEP licences, it will be important for licensors to consider how to charge different licensees different prices without infringing the non-discrimination limb of FRAND.

Can it be assumed that price differentiation is likely to distort competition? Should a competition authority have to demonstrate that the competitiveness of any business placed at a disadvantage by differential pricing has suffered? The CJEU decision in MEO offers some useful guidance on these questions.

Facts

MEO is a mobile / telecoms service offered by Portugal Telecom. As part of this service MEO provides television content, and therefore pays royalties to the Portuguese collecting society that manages the rights of artists and performers, GDA. In 2014 MEO made a complaint to the Portuguese Competition Authority that GDA had abused its dominant position by (amongst other things) applying different terms and conditions (including price) to MEO compared to another entity also providing television content, NOS. The Portuguese Competition Authority found that GDA had applied different tariffs to different customers between 2009 and 2013. However, it concluded that this price differentiation had no restrictive effects on MEO, and so took no action against GDA. MEO appealed this decision to the Portuguese Regulation and Supervision Court, which referred a number of questions regarding differential pricing to the CJEU.

CJEU decision

The CJEU referred to its previous decisions in Intel and Post Danmark II in setting out three key principles that applied:

1. Proof of actual, quantifiable deterioration of a particular customer’s competitive position is not required for a finding of competitive disadvantage.
2. All the relevant circumstances must be examined to determine whether price discrimination produces or is capable of producing a competitive disadvantage.
3. The mere presence of an immediate disadvantage affecting operators who are charged more does not mean that competition is distorted or capable of being distorted.

The CJEU also noted that when assessing particular prices charged by a dominant undertaking, the authorities may assess the undertaking’s negotiating power, the conditions and arrangements for charging any tariffs, their duration and amount, and the existence of any strategy aimed at excluding companies from a downstream market. The CJEU also reaffirmed that there is no de minimis threshold for the purposes of determining whether there is an abuse of a dominant position, albeit this will feed into the analysis of potential effect (paragraph 29).

Impact

This decision offers helpful clarifications on how Article 102(c) should be interpreted. Although relatively narrow in scope, it has broad implications, particularly in the FRAND context, price discrimination between licensees is a controversial topic that has received relatively little judicial or regulator attention to date.

As we describe in this article, in its Communication on SEPs, the Commission appeared to endorse a specific non-discrimination obligation in FRAND, stating that SEP holders cannot discriminate between implementers that are ‘similarly situated’. However, it did not specifically say that there is a requirement for distortion of competition between those similarly situated licensees (as for example the High Court had held in Unwired Planet, though this issue is being appealed), or whether harm to an individual firm rather than harm to competition might be sufficient (as a US court recently decided in TCL v Ericsson).

The CJEU’s MEO decision suggests that price discrimination will only be abusive if it leads to a distortion of competition (paragraph 27). So it seems there is scope for licensors to charge similarly situated licensees different royalty rates without breaching their FRAND obligations, as long as they do not distort competition by doing so.