competitionlaw

The CJEU has already dealt with the issue whether pricing policies of collecting managing society violated Article 102 TFEU in Tournier (Case 395/87, Ministère Public v Tornier ), Lucazeau (Case 110/88, Lucazeau v SACEM ), Kanal 5 v STIM (Case C-52/07) and OSA v Léčebné lázně Mariánské Lázně a.s (Case C-351/12). This issue emerged again in AKKA/LAA ( Case C-177/16, Opinion of Advocate General Wahl deliveredon 6th April 2017 ) where the AG Wahl gave his thoughts on the methodologies a competition authority has to follow to establish an anti-competitive excessive pricing practice. The facts of the case and the preliminary questions referred to the CJEU In April 2013 the Competition Council of Latvia (CCL) found that AKKA/LAA, a collecting society, applied excessively high rates in respect of the remuneration of authors. To reach that conclusion, the CCL compared the rates charged by AKKA/LAA with those applied in neighbouring Lithuania and Estonia as well as to those applie...

Following the receipt of several complaints, in the case I805, Intesa  nel settore del cartone ondulato e relative imballaggi ( http://www.agcm.it/component/joomdoc/allegati-news/I805_avv.%20istrutt.pdf/download.html ), the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against several undertakings in corrugated cardboard sector. The ICA feared that the parties had implemented two collusion arrangements: one affecting the market for corrugated cardboard (the corrugated cardboard collusion) and one affecting the market for packaging made by corrugated cardboard (the packaging collusion). The ICA believed that the SK group, Progest, Cartonstrong, the DS Smith group, the Laveggia group, Innova, Imballaggi Piemontesi, Ondulati Nordovest and Ondulati Friuli took part in the corrugated cardboard collusion on the ground of the following evidence and facts collected in the preliminary investigations. Since 2004 the parties have constantly applied the sam...