Kluwer Competition Law Blog

On June 10, 2010, the Düsseldorf Court of Appeals issued a decision that increased the hurdles for obtaining access to essential facilities in Germany in practice (see WuW/DE-R 2941 et seq.). The case concerns interim proceedings against a FCO decision.

The FCO had found that Scandlines, the owner and operator of the ferry port Puttgarden, abused its dominant position by refusing access to the port infrastructure, and ordered Scandlines to negotiate access modalities with the complainants. The port was considered an essential facility necessary for the complainants to offer ferry services between Puttgarden (Germany) and Rødby (Denmark), a route that so far only Scandlines offered. Scan [...]

In my last post, I focused on a procedural element of the Commission’s Microsoft/Yahoo! decision. The decision is also very interesting from a substantive point of view, and shows the Commission’s determination to investigate the transaction in some detail, even though on the face of it (as the Phase I clearance subsequently confirmed), it raised no substantive issues.

Almost two years after Google/DoubleClick, the decision offers a relatively detailed discussion of the dynamics governing the fast-growing multi-billion industry of on-line advertising.

The Commission’s competitive assessment starts out in the traditional way. First, it defines the markets. Second, it notes that searc [...]

With the recent adoption of competition law statutes in East and South Asia and reforms completed or under way in Latin America, among other developments, the design – and enforcement – of competition principles for the global economy has attracted renewed interest on the part of practitioners and academics alike.

On July 1, 2010, the European General Court rendered its judgment in the AstraZeneca case, dismissing for the most part AstraZeneca’s appeal against the Commission’s infringement decision of June 2005.  In that decision, the Commission had found AstraZeneca’s Losec to be dominant in the market for proton pump inhibitors, a type of medicine used for the treatment of ulcers and other gastrointestinal problems.  The Commission held that AstraZeneca had abused that dominant position in two ways:  (1) by providing patent authorities misleading launch date information when applying for a special protection certificate for Losec and (2) by withdrawing its marketing registration for an olde [...]

The Commission’s recent decision approving Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo!’s Search Business (including internet search and search advertising) contains an interesting application of the definition of a concentration under the Merger Regulation.

In December 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo entered into a License Agreement and a Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement. Microsoft will acquire a 10 year exclusive license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies and will have the right to integrate these technologies into its own web search platform. In addition, Microsoft agreed to hire more than 400 Yahoo! employees.

Yahoo! will exclusively use Microsoft’s search engines on Ya [...]