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This new Sixth Edition of a major work by the well-known competition law team at Van Bael & Bellis in Brussels brings the book up to date to take account of the many developments in the case law and relevant legislation that have occurred since the Fifth Edition in 2010. The authors have also taken the opportunity to write a much-extended chapter on private enforcement and a dedicated section on competition law in the pharmaceutical sector. As one would expect, the new edition continues to meet the challenge for businesses and their counsel, providing a thoroughly practical guide to the application of the EU competition rules. The critical commentary cuts through the theoretical underpinnings of EU competition law to expose its actual impact on business. In this comprehensive new edition, the authors examine such notable developments as the following: important rulings concerning the concept of a restriction by object under Article 101; the extensive case law in the field of cartels, including in relation to cartel facilitation and price signalling; important Article 102 rulings concerning pricing and exclusivity, including the Post Danmark and Intel judgments, as well as standard essential patents; the current block exemption and guidelines applicable to vertical agreements, including those applicable to the motor vehicle sector; developments concerning online distribution, including the Pierre Fabre and Coty rulings; the current guidelines and block exemptions in the field of horizontal cooperation, including the treatment of information exchange; the evolution of EU merger control, including court defeats suffered by the Commission and the case law on procedural infringements; the burgeoning case law related to pharmaceuticals, including concerning reverse payment settlements; the current technology transfer guidelines and block exemption; procedural developments, including in relation to the right to privacy, access to file, parental liability, fining methodology, inability to pay and hybrid settlements; the implementation of the Damages Directive and the first interpretative rulings. As a comprehensive, up-to-date and above all practical analysis of the EU competition rules as developed by the Commission and EU Courts, this authoritative new edition of a classic work stands alone. Like its predecessors, it will be of immeasurable value to both business persons and their legal advisers.
The vast majority of the countries in the world are developing countries—there are only thirty-four OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries—and yet there is a serious dearth of attention to developing countries in the international and comparative law scholarship, which has been preoccupied with the United States and the European Union. Competition Law and Development investigates whether or not the competition law and policy transplanted from Europe and the United States can be successfully implemented in the developing world or whether the developing-world experience suggests a need for a different analytical framework. The political and economic environment of developing countries often differs significantly from that of developed countries in ways that may have serious implications for competition law enforcement. The need to devote greater attention to developing countries is also justified by the changing global economic reality in which developing countries—especially China, India, and Brazil—have emerged as economic powerhouses. Together with Russia, the so-called BRIC countries have accounted for thirty percent of global economic growth since the term was coined in 2001. In this sense, developing countries deserve more attention not because of any justifiable differences from developed countries in competition law enforcement, either in theoretical or practical terms, but because of their sheer economic heft. This book, the second in the Global Competition Law and Economics series, provides a number of viewpoints of what competition law and policy mean both in theory and practice in a development context.
The assumption that competition law and consumer protection are mutually reinforcing is rarely challenged. The theory seems uncontroversial. However, because a positive interaction between the two is presumed to be self-evident, the frequent conflicts that do in fact arise are often dealt with on an ad hoc basis, with no overarching legal authority. There is a clear need for a detailed and coherent understanding of exactly where the complements and tensions between the two policy areas exist. Dr Cseres in-depth analysis provides that understanding. Proceeding from the dual perspective of law and economics that is, of justice, fairness, and reasonableness on the one hand, and of efficiency of the other she fully considers such underlying issues as the following: the role of competition law and consumer law in a free market economy;the notion of consumer welfare;the effect of the modernisation of EC competition law for consumers;economics theories of information, bounded rationality, and transaction costs;the special significance of vertical agreements and merger control; and,how consumers are affected by information asymmetries. The ultimate focus of the book is on current and emerging EC law, in which a rapprochement between the two areas seems to be under way. Dr. Cseres provides a knowledgeable guide to the various strands of theory, policy, and jurisprudence that (she shows) ought to be taken into account in the process, including schools of thought and law and policy experience in both Europe and the United States. A special chapter on Hungary, where post-1989 law and practice reveal a fresh and distinctly forward-looking understanding of the matter, is one of the book's most extraordinary features. Competition Law and Consumer Protection stands alone as a committed contribution to bridging a gap in legal knowledge the significance of which grows daily. It will be of immeasurable value to a wide range of professionals from academics and researchers to officials, policymakers, and practitioners in competition law, consumer protection advocacy, economic theory and planning, business administration, and various pertinent government authorities.
Competition law, at both the EC and UK levels, plays an important and ever-increasing role in regulating the conduct of businesses. Based on the premise that open and fair competition is good for both consumers and businesses, competition law prevents businesses from entering into anti-competitive agreements and from abusing their dominant market position. Competition Law and Policy in the EC and UK looks at how competition law affects business, including: co-ordinated actions; pricing behaviour; take-overs and mergers; and state subsidies. It provides a clear guide to and outline of the general policies behind, and the main provisions of EC and UK competition law. Information is presented within a structured framework, complete with a glossary of useful terminology. This fourth edition has been revised and updated to take into account developments since publication of the previous edition, including expanded coverage of the regulation of cartels, the development of private enforcement, the consideration of IP issues in Microsoft, and extended discussion of UK competition Law.
Over the last three decades, the field of antitrust law has grown increasingly prominent, and more than one hundred countries have enacted competition law statutes. As competition law expands to jurisdictions with very different economic, social, cultural, and institutional backgrounds, the debates over its usefulness have similarly evolved. This book, the first in a new series on global competition law, critically assesses the importance of competition law, its development and modern practice, and the global limits that have emerged. This volume will be a key resource to both scholars and practitioners interested in antitrust, competition law, economics, business strategy, and administrative sciences.
The digitization of industrial processes has suddenly taken a great leap forward, with burgeoning applications in manufacturing, transportation and numerous other areas. Many stakeholders, however, are uncertain about the opportunities and risks associated with it and what it really means for businesses and national economies. Clarity of legal rules is now a pressing necessity. This book, the first to deal with legal questions related to Industrial Internet, follows a multidisciplinary approach that is instructed by law concerning intellectual property, data protection, competition, contracts and licensing, focusing on business, technology and policy-driven issues. Experts in various relevant fields of science and industry measure the legal tensions created by Industrial Internet in our global economy and propose solutions that are both theoretically valuable and concretely practical, identifying workable business models and practices based on both technical and legal knowledge. Perspectives include the following: regulating Industrial Internet via intellectual property rights (IPR); data ownership versus control over data; artificial intelligence and IPR infringement; patent owning in Industrial Internet; abuse of dominance in Industrial Internet platforms; data collaboration, pooling and hoarding; legal implications of granular versioning technologies; and misuse of information for anticompetitive purposes. The book represents a record of a major collaborative project, held between 2016 and 2019 in Finland, involving a number of universities, technology firms and law firms. As Industrial Internet technologies are already being used in several businesses, it is of paramount importance for the global economy that legal, business and policy-related challenges are promptly analyzed and discussed. This crucially important book not only reveals the legal and policy-related issues that we soon will have to deal with but also facilitates the creation of legislation and policies that promote Industrial-Internet-related technologies and new business opportunities. It will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, patent and other IPR attorneys, innovation economists and companies operating in the Industrial Internet ecosystem, as well as by competition authorities and other policymakers.
The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.
Business Innovation and the Law analyses the topical issue of protecting and promoting business research and development. It does so by examining business innovation through the lens of different legal disciplines Ð intellectual property, labour and employment laws, competition and corporate laws. Evaluating the impact of each of these areas using discipline-specific and industry perspectives, the book also explores questions about whether a more harmonized approach is necessary to provide appropriate protection. Approaches of the common law and civil jurisdictions, particularly the European Union, inform and provide guidance to the analysis of emerging issues in this field. This book provides insights into various approaches taken by both common law and civil law jurisdictions regarding the increasingly blurred line of ownership rights in innovative industries. It traverses various disciplines of law as well as jurisdictions. Using interdisciplinary perspectives to business innovation and inter-jurisdictional comparisons and analysis, this book will appeal to university administrators responsible for intellectual property policy, managers of technology transfer offices in universities, intellectual property lawyers, labour and employment lawyers and competition lawyers.
This book gathers national and international reports from around the globe on key issues in the field of antitrust and intellectual property. Its first part discusses to what extent competition law should be concerned with differences in prices, terms and conditions, or quality that suppliers offer different purchasers. A detailed international report explores the major trends and challenges in this field and provides an excellent comparative study on this complex and challenging subject. In turn, the second part examines whether there should be legal restrictions on the ability of persons who claim, without sufficient justification, to hold IP rights that have been infringed on, to bring, or to threaten to bring, legal proceedings based on such claims against their competitors or others. In this regard, the book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world, all summarised and elaborated on in an international report. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following debates on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.
Information Exchange Between Competitors in EU Competition Law Martin Gassler Competing firms often exchange information in order to make more informed market decisions which can help to overcome market inefficiencies. However, an abundance of legal and economic research as well as case law has shown that information exchange may also enable firms to engage in collusion more readily and sustain it longer. This book is the first to concentrate on this challenging topic of EU competition law in such depth. It focuses on ‘pure’ information exchanges – exchanges that are not ancillary to a wider pro-competitive or anticompetitive conduct – and thoroughly explains the characteristics of such information exchanges, their pro-competitive and anticompetitive effects and discusses all the relevant legal aspects for their assessment. The author provides a robust analytical framework for assessing information exchanges under Article 101 TFEU, focusing on the risk of collusive outcomes and what types of information exchange are particularly harmful. With detailed attention to the leading cases on information exchange, the analysis examines the most important aspects for assessing information exchange between competitors, in particular: the concept of a concerted practice; the concepts of a restriction by object and effect, including their similarities and differences; the importance of evidentiary issues; the issue of signalling via advance public announcements; factors that facilitate collusion; efficiencies of information exchange, including market transparency; the legal challenges of tackling mere parallel conduct; facilitative practices in the Commission Guidelines, including the Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines; and safe harbours for certain types of information exchange. The book offers clear guidance on how to identify and thus distinguish information exchange that restricts competition by its object and information exchange that restricts competition (only) by its effects. It offers practical solutions to some of the perceived issues when assessing information exchanges. With its wealth of analysis not available from other sources, this concise yet comprehensive review of a much-debated topic in competition law offers clear guidance for practitioners in assessing the issues surrounding information exchange. The book will also be welcomed by competition law academics, competition lawyers and competition authority officials throughout Europe.