The European Commission has issued two connected statements of objections to Qualcomm for exclusive dealings and predatory pricing, both potentially bringing about anti-competitive effects. The investigation against Qualcomm was opened in July 2015, when the Commission disclosed concerns about a possible abuse of dominant position by Qualcomm in the baseband chipset market. Eventually, at the…
On 3 December, the Commission announced that it launched a formal investigation into Luxembourg’s tax treatment of McDonald’s. The investigation aims to verify the concerns that two tax rulings issued by Luxembourg in 2009 provided McDonald’s with an advantageous tax treatment in violation of EU state aid rules. According to the preliminary observations of the…
On 25 November 2015, the Court of Appeal of Paris allowed the appeal of Google against a first instance decision granting damages to Evermaps for abuse of dominant position of Google. The two companies are direct competitors in the online map sector, as both companies offer a mapping service that allows users to embed a…
On 21 October, the Commission announced its decisions whereby Luxembourg and Netherlands are found to have violated EU state aid rules, as they granted selective tax advantages to Fiat Finance and Trade and Starbucks respectively by issuing tax rulings artificially lowering the tax paid by the companies. These decisions followed in-depth investigations that were opened…
On 6 October the European Court of Justice delivered the Post Danmark judgement in which it gave a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of a rebate scheme under Article 102 TFEU. In 2007 and 2008 Post Danmark A/S implemented a retroactive rebate scheme in the context of distribution of bulk advertising mail to recipients in…
On 9 September the General Court issued the judgments reducing the fines imposed by the Commission in 2012 (Case COMP/39.437) on Panasonic and Toshiba for their involvement in a cartel on the European market for picture tubes for television sets. Following the leniency application submitted by Chunghwa, the Commission imposed in the contested decision the…
Comment by Marco Lo Bue (Italian Competition Authority) On 16 July 2015, the European Court of Justice addressed the request for a preliminary ruling submitted by the District Court of Dűsseldorf with regard to the Huawei v ZTE case . The referring Court had raised the question whether an action for infringement brought by a FRAND-encumbered…
On 23 July, the European Commission has filed a formal Statement of Objections against Sky UK and six major US film studios (Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros), having preliminarily determined that their bilateral licensing agreements containing clauses that inhibit access to pay-TV services for consumers located outside the UK and…
As maintained in the statement published by the Commission on 15 July, Hungary’s amended ‘food chain inspection fee’ and a new tobacco tax, in particular the progressive nature of the rates based on companies’ turnover, may prove to amount to the infringement of EU state aid provisions. The Commission, concerned that companies with a lower…
The European Court of Justice delivered, on 16 July, its judgment on the preliminary ruling regarding the Huawei case, stating that an action brought by an undertaking in dominant position, seeking injunction and compensation against an alleged infringer of a SEP, not necessarily infringes Article 102 TFEU. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (‘Huawei’) owns – inter…