Category Archives: Round-Up

by | January 14, 2014 · 4:39 pm

Competition round-up: January 2014

It is again time for a round-up of recent competition law developments which have caught our attention.

Most attention-grabbing of all was the European Commission’s genius/bizarre/inexplicable decision to publish a comic book which is probably best described as a bureaucrat’s fantasy. A young Commission official (Thomas) starts talking to a beautiful woman (Chloe) in an airport departure lounge. Instead of ignoring his slightly creepy advances, Chloe turns out to want nothing more than to hear about the Commission’s antitrust work. Indeed, when Thomas false-modestly suggests that he might be boring her, she insists she wants to hear more:

EU-cartoon

And so starts the most fascinating hour of Chloe’s life. I should thank the Legal Cheek blog for bringing this important piece of work to my attention. Continue reading →

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by | August 12, 2013 · 11:03 pm

Competition round-up: Summer 2013

It is time for what has become the Competition Bulletin’s regular half-yearly update of EU and UK competition law developments. (For our previous round-ups see here).

Thinking big Continue reading →

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by | January 11, 2013 · 7:47 am

Competition round-up: January 2013

As today is the first day of the new court term, I thought it would be a good moment for a round-up of last term’s competition cases – and, of course, the customary plug of our own blogs.

If there was a theme to the Michaelmas term, it was the highs and lows of follow-on claims. Few pieces of legislation can have attracted so much judicial attention in so short a time as s.47A of the Competition Act 1998. It has now gone as far as the Supreme Court, which confirmed in BCL Old Company Ltd v BASF plc [2012] UKSC 45 that the rules governing limitation periods for bringing follow on claims in the CAT are not so unpredictable as to breach European principles of legal certainty (a topic which I blogged on here). Continue reading →

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by | September 11, 2012 · 10:38 pm

Competition round-up: Summer 2012

As most of us are now returned from our summer holidays, I thought I’d take advantage of the ‘back to school’ feeling with a round-up of the most significant competition cases since Easter. This also provides a good excuse to highlight the best blogs from the Competition Bulletin’s first couple of months.

I’ll start with a case that should, but probably won’t, make the law reports: the decision of the Appeal Panel of the Rugby Football Union, which held in an appeal by London Welsh that the RFU rules on primacy of tenure are contrary to Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and therefore void. The case is notable not only for the finding itself, but also because it was heard and decided so quickly – arguments which would take days in the High Court (and probably weeks in the CAT) were heard over the course of a day, and the 38-page judgment completed the following day. James Segan blogged on the case here.

There has been much good news for claimants in follow-on damages claims. Continue reading →

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