Covington Competition

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By: Covington & Burling LLP

Blog Authors

Andrea Zulli
Covington Competition
Deborah Garza
Daniel Muheme
Elaine Whiteford
Franka Felsner
Geoffrey Kalantari
Gemma Nash
Graham Vinter
Ike Morinaga
Jonathan Benjamin
Jérôme de Ponsay
Jeremy Wilson
Johan Ysewyn
Kevin Coates
Kim-Simone Janutta
Laura Corbett
Liesl Houben
Marie-Andrée Larouche
Miranda Cole
Matthew DelNero
Mike Nonaka
Melissa Van Schoorisse
Peter Camesasca
Rebecca Yergin
Sophie Bertin
Spyridon Goulielmos
Siobhan L.M. Kahmann
Thomas Barnett
Wesley Lepla
William Park

Latest from Covington Competition

In the last months, the Landgericht Düsseldorf (District Court of Düsseldorf – LG Düsseldorf) has handed down  10 judgments dealing with standard essential patents (SEPs) in the smart phone sector.  While not all judgments have been published yet, cases 4a O 17/17 and 4b O 4/17 answered a number of fundamental questions as to how German courts will apply the CJEU’s case law for FRAND licensing of SEPs by patent pools. …
On 16 January 2019, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) rejected the European Commission’s (“Commission”) appeal in Commission v. UPS. The judgment followed Advocate General Kokott’s Opinion of July 2018, and upholds the 2017 judgment of the General Court (“GC”) annulling on procedural grounds the Commission’s decision prohibiting the acquisition of TNT by UPS.…
On 14 February 2019, the General Court (“GC”) annulled the European Commission’s (“Commission”) decision of 11 January 2016 declaring Belgium’s system of excess profit rulings as an aid scheme incompatible with the Internal Market.  The Commission had ordered the Belgian authorities to recover around € 700 million from at least 35 companies that had benefited from the excess profit exemption through tax rulings.  The GC considered that the excess profit exemption was not a “scheme”…
On 21 January 2019, the UK government published its draft statutory instrument on State aid, outlining the changes to the UK State aid regime in the event of a no deal Brexit. Its publication comes at critical moment for the UK as it considers the potential options for leaving the European Union: (i) leave with a deal; (ii) leave without a deal; or (iii) postpone the date of leaving. The State Aid (EU Exit) Regulations 2019…
Potentially significant changes are just around the corner for the UK competition system, as the country prepares to take the final step of exiting the European Union. In this regard, the UK has three potential options: (i) leave with a deal; (ii) leave without a deal; or (iii) postpone the date of leaving. Should the UK leave the EU with a deal, then its departure shall be governed by the Withdrawal Act ( “WA”), which…
On 13 December 2018, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) rejected an appeal by Electricité de France (“EDF”) against a General Court (“GC”) judgment confirming a Commission decision ordering France to recover EUR 1.37 billion in State aid from EDF (Case C-221/18 P EDF v Commission). The ECJ judgment confirms that the aid, which had been granted back in 1997, had to be recovered. The EDF saga provides several lessons on how the private…
On 12 December 2018, the EU General Court (GC) delivered its judgment in the Servier reverse payment patent settlement case, the second GC judgment to date on reverse payment patent settlements (after the 2016 Lundbeck judgment). The GC confirmed that such agreements fall within the scope of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and may constitute a restriction of competition by object. The GC also confirmed that,…
Introduction On December 3, 2018, the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets (“ACM”) published a speech from its board member, Cateautje Hijmans van den Bergh, regarding potential competition law concerns in the financial technology (“FinTech”) sector. In particular, further to the European Parliament’s study on FinTech and competition law (the “Study”) – as discussed in a previous blog post – Hijmans van den Bergh voiced concerns regarding potential FinTech foreclosure, following the adoption of Technical…
The General Court dismissed the appeal by Groupe Canal + against the European Commission’s decision accepting Paramount’s commitments in the cross-border pay-TV investigation (T-873/16 Groupe Canal +). It held that territorial restrictions leading to a partitioning of the internal market could be considered as by-object infringements of competition law, thereby rejecting arguments of copyright law and cultural diversity as a justification under the facts in this particular case.…
In November 2018, following an in-depth Phase 2 investigation, the European Commission (“Commission”) unconditionally approved the acquisition of Tele2 NL by T-Mobile NL, respectively the fourth and third largest players in the Dutch retail mobile telecoms market. The merged entity remains the third largest player in this market after KPN and VodafoneZiggo. This transaction is the first “four-to-three” telecom merger approved without remedies under Commissioner Vestager’s term, following earlier Commission decisions on four-to-three mergers in (i) H3G/Wind…