This paper shows that the technology giants that antitrust agencies tend to characterize as entrenched monopolists can also be seen as firms engaged in a process of vibrant oligopolistic competition. Those firms - we refer to them as "moligopolists" - compete against the non-consumption in...

In European legal scholarship, many articles discuss the equilibrium reached in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) when the EU antitrust prohibitions apply to, and restrain, the free and ordinary use of intellectual property rights (“IPRs”). We call this...

This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to...

This paper proposes an understanding of abuse of collective dominance or shared monopolization that does not outlaw oligopolistic tacit collusion as such, but that reputes abusive a set of tactics adopted by tacitly colluding oligopolists exposed to disruption. As much as deviation is an...

This paper reviews the 2014 Intel judgment of the General Court of the EU in relation to exclusivity rebates given by dominant firms. It distinguishes between the positive issue – ie the legal standard currently applicable to the assessment of dominant firms' rebates – and the prospective...

In European Union ("EU") competition law, the supply policy of a dominant input provider can be deemed unlawful, if his wholesale and retail price-mix forces rival input purchasers to compete at a loss on the downstream market. This is known as an abusive "margin squeeze". Whilst this stands to...

This paper discusses the judgment of the EU General Court of 12 June 2014 in the Intel case. It argues that the EU case-law on the use of exclusivity rebate systems by undertakings occupying a dominant position is economically sound, and that the criticism directed at this case-law is ill-founded

On June 27, 2017, the European Commission imposed a record fine of 2.4 billion EUR on Google for violating EU competition law. More specifically, the Commission issued a decision finding that Google had infringed Article 102 TFEU by abusing its dominant position on the market for online general...

At the heart of the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple is a set of restrictions Apple imposes on app developers. For instance, Apple prohibits the distribution of iOS apps outside of the App Store, which Apple fully controls. Apple similarly requires developers to exclusively use its own...

In the last years, some Standard-Setting Organizations (“SSOs”) active in wireless communications have experimented new pricing principles for standard essential patents (“SEPs”). One of those experiments is the “SSPPU” rule. Under SSPPU, the licensing rates paid to owners of SEPs...