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…
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…
The burden of proof falling on the claimant in competition damages actions, especially if stand-alone type, is notoriously fraught with difficulty. As a consequence, if the national judge interprets the domestic procedural laws in a strict and formalistic manner, this may render the burden not just difficult but nearly close to impossible. The Italian Court…
With a recent judgment in the case T-623/13, the General Court ratified the presumption used by the European Commission for which documents exchanged between the Commission and a national competition authority in proceedings concerning an infringement of the competition rules may harm the commercial interest of the undertakings involved and therefore are not, in principle,…
Vivil, a German producer of cough drops and vitamin sweets, sued Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar refiner, for compensation of damages caused by the German ‘sugar cartel’. The defendant participated, together with Nordzucker and Pfeifer, to anticompetitive agreements on sales areas, quotas and prices. The infringements involved the sale of sugar for the processing industry (so-called industrial…
The fifth edition of the Trento Antitrust Conference will be held in Trento on 16-18 April 2015. The Conference is organized by the Trento Faculty of Law and the Osservatorio Permanente sull’Applicazione delle Regole di Concorrenza (“Antitrust Observatory”), founded and co-directed by Michele Carpagnano and Gian Antonio Benacchio. The event is supported by the Italian…
Since the entry into force of the ‘Loi Hamon’ on 1 October 2014, introducing the class action in the French system, several claims have been lodged in the competent courts by consumer associations. The first class action was brought by the association UFC – Que Choisir against Foncia, on 1 October 2014, in order to…
Today (10 November 2014), the Council formally adopted the corrigendum text as approved by the ECON Committee in September 2014 for the Directive on antitrust damages actions. The text was signed off without amendments and it is therefore expected that the text of the Directive, which will shortly be published in the Official Journal of…