competitionlaw

The European Commission has recently reviewed a number of public aid measures granted to airport managers and airliners on the basis of the 2014 Commission's Aviation Guidelines. In particular, in the cases of Angoulême Airport (Case SA.33963) , Pau Pyrénées Airport (Case SA.22614) and Nîmes Airport (Case SA.33961) , the Commission examined the airport service agreements and marketing agreements concluded by the managers of the airports of Angoulême, Pau Pyrénées and Nîmes Airport with Ryanair. The Commission assessed the aid measures granted to Ryanair on the basis of the principle of market economy operator. It ruled that the above agreements gave Ryanair an undue advantage over its competitors and that the agreements were unlikely to improve the financial conditions of the airports concerned. Therefore, no market economy operators would have granted such measures to Ryanair in similar circumstances. Aid granted to the airline was considered by the Commission as mere operating...

Vending industry in Italy is going well with growing profits in 2013, too. Recently, this industry attracted the attention of the Italian Competition Authority (ICA). By the decision of 17 July 2014 the ICA has opened an investigation against 14 firms which were alleged to have cartelized the Italian vending markets ( Case I738 ). The ICA started the investigation in the Case I738 following a report filed by an operator that was interested in installing a new vending machine. On the basis of the facts submitted by the complainant, the ICA believed that the parties entered into a non-competition agreement having as object to crystallize their market shares. According to the ICA, the parties agreed to refrain from supplying operators that were already clients of the other parties. The Case I738 is also a useful reminder for firms to of the relevance to promote competition compliance among all their employees. Indeed, the ICA decision was based, among other things, on a chat the comp...

I published here a brief note on the Pinterest v Premier Interest case recently decided by the OHIM. By a decision made on 5 November 2013 the Opposition Division of Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) rejected the Pinterest opposition against the Premium Interest trade mark application. The decision is worth reading as it illustrates the difficulties for social media to invoke the trade mark protection for their brands, due to the gap between the territoriality of trade mark laws and the borderless dimension of the Internet economy. The note identifies the main problems in proving that the mark of a social network is effectively used as a trade mark in the course of trade.