The value of liability tests in abuses of dominance

Currently, there is a debate in the European Union regarding the European Commission’s approach in assessing the behaviour of dominant firms. It is argued that as digital ecosystems become more powerful, there is increasing pressure on the Commission to act against their practices, regardless of whether they meet the test established by the European Courts to find out liability. This article aims to demonstrate that the Commission’s approach, which occasionally deviates from liability tests, is legitimate, because it aligns with the effects-based notion of abuse and the teleological interpretation of treaty rules. Moreover, this article maintains that if such liability tests were unalterable, their individual components would be elevated to essential elements of the concept of abuse, which directly contradicts the current interpretation of this notion. Finally, the article asserts that the liability tests used thus far represent a collection of factual circumstances that hold substantial evidential value in demonstrating the effects of dominant firms’ practices. It however acknowledges that, while this evidential value has remained high over time, it may still vary depending on the circumstances. This is why the particular circumstances that make up the elements of these tests can be substituted with alternative circumstances, depending on the specific scenario being analysed

Planned Obsolescence: A Strategy in Search of Legal Rules

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The intersection between intellectual property and antitrust law

The chapter analyzes how intellectual property and competition interact

Policy Recommendation on the Competition Law Issues of the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI)

Based on a description of the structure and competitive relationships that characterize PSI markets, and in the light of some case studies and legal decisions from sev - eral EU Member States, this document addresses what legal rules a new Directive, amending Directive 2003/98/CE on the re-use of Public Sector Information, could introduce in order to both discourage anticompetitive business practices and make them easier to be detected and proved

Standardized Terms and Conditions For Open Patenting

After providing a legal characterization of the open patenting phenomenon and discussing many of the empirical and theoretical experiences that relate to both Open Innovation and defensive patenting, this paper suggests standardized terms and conditions that a patent license should contain in order to foster both the free movement of patented knowledge and its business applications

Open Data and Competition Law Some Issues Regarding Access and Pricing of Raw Data

Public sector information (PSI) is a very valuable resource that, back in 2003, the EU parliament and council decided to appraise by incentivizing its re-use via a dedicated Directive. In 2013, the directive was revised to further promote the development of a single European market for information goods and services. On the bases of the European and national case law, this article investigates the main competitive issues that this EU law about PSI triggers

La nozione antitrust di impresa ai tempi della sharing economy e la tutela dei lavoratori: per l’arretramento del diritto antitrust

Gli accordi collettivi tra service providers e piattaforme possono escludersi dall’ambito di applicazione del diritto antitrust in nome delle ragioni socio-politiche che negli anni ‘90 già indussero la Corte di Giustizia a sottrarre allo scrutinio antitrust gli accordi collettivi tra le parti sociali. Non occorre transitare per la nozione di impresa

Competition law is not to blame: why gig workers cannot conclude collective agreements in the EU

In his writings, Professor Hovenkamp has frequently remarked the importance of administrability. Antitrust rules have to be simple enough to be generally applicable. What this concept aims to avoid is too high a burden on judges to reconcile or balance too many conflicting rights at a time. This paper elaborates on this, to show that the best way possible to guarantee gig workers the right to bargain collectively is not to ask EU competition law to protect wealth equality, fairness, or workers’ social rights, but to ask EU competition law to take a step back when the “undertakings” at stake are individual workers, whose conditions are of utmost social importance. Albany and the subsequent case law already establishes that the protection of social rights under Articles 151-161 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) trumps the protection of competition. Therefore, on the one hand, if gig workers had access to those social rights, they could effectively defend their interests through collective bargaining; on the other hand, EU competition law is not to blame for their exclusion, because it is not the role of EU competition law to designate who should enjoy social right