competitionlaw

The Intel judgment and the extraterritorial application of EU competition Much has been already written about the CJEU’s rulings in its recent Intel judgment (Case C-413/14 P Intel v Commission II ) regarding the legal test for vetting whether exclusivity and loyalty rebate schemes breach competition. This post looks at Intel from a different viewpoint focusing, instead, on the extraterritorial application of EU competition law. More specifically, it considers the rulings made by the CJEU on the question whether the Commission has asserted, in accordance with public international law, its prescriptive jurisdiction on the agreement concluded by Intel with a non-EU computer manufacturer, the Chinese firm Lenovo. The legal background Over the years, the EU courts and the European Commission have developed and applied a number of legal tests to determine whether EU competition rules could apply to non-EU firms, whose conducts may harm competition in the internal market, with...

Combating excessive pricing in the pharmaceutical sector has recently become a top priority in the enforcement agenda of national competition authorities. Over the past year anti-competitive excessive pricing practices have been detected by the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) and the Italian Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (ICA) in the Pfizer/Flynn and Aspen cases, respectively. The post compares the methodologies followed by the CMA and ICA to establish that the pricing policies implemented by the investigated firms were excessive and breached competition. Correctly understanding how the excessive price test is administered by competition authorities is then important for drug manufacturers to assess whether the pricing policies are prohibited by competition law with the risk of being levied hefty fines. This issue is also of relevance for national health authorities and patients. Feeling aggrieved by apparently exploitative pricing policies applied by m...