Showing archive for: “European Public Law: EU”
Reverse Patent Pools and Other TTBER Tall Tales
In standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing, every procedural tweak is also a skirmish over bargaining power. That is what makes licensing negotiation groups (LNGs) more than an obscure acronym in the European Commission’s 2026 Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER) and accompanying Guidelines (TTGs). LNGs would allow technology implementers to bargain collectively with rights holders. Depending ... Reverse Patent Pools and Other TTBER Tall Tales
Merger Guidelines for the Industrial Policy Curious
The European Commission published its draft “guidelines on the assessment of mergers under Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004 on the control of concentrations between undertakings” yesterday. The title does what titles of merger guidelines usually do: it lowers expectations. That is useful misdirection. The document itself is anything but dull. The draft guidelines span more ... Merger Guidelines for the Industrial Policy Curious
The Hidden Premise: Smuggling Paternalism Through the Back Door
A familiar pattern has taken hold in platform regulation—and in the academic and policy commentary that surrounds it. Critics spot a real phenomenon, recast it as market failure, and then press for intervention that far outstrips what the evidence can support. The result: arguments that read as persuasive but collapse under scrutiny. They conflate distinct ... The Hidden Premise: Smuggling Paternalism Through the Back Door
The Price of Watching Prices: Italy’s Slow Slide from Markets to Management
If regulators could make markets behave simply by watching them more closely, Italy would be about to crack the code. Instead, the Italian government’s latest energy measures suggest something else: when prices rise, the instinct is not just to subsidize costs, but to supervise how those costs flow through the system—down to how firms bid, ... The Price of Watching Prices: Italy’s Slow Slide from Markets to Management
Rinse, Repeat, Reject: ‘Washing’ Claims in Antitrust
Although not a single, Mitski’s “Washing Machine Heart” ranks among her most popular songs. Its insistent drumbeat echoes the spin cycle of an old washing machine, recalling the singer’s frustration with her romantic life. Competition policy has its own fixation on “washing.” In this context, “washing” describes efforts by undertakings to invoke public policy goals—such ... Rinse, Repeat, Reject: ‘Washing’ Claims in Antitrust
A Fistful of Discretion: The UK’s DMCC After Two Years
When Sergio Leone shot “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in 1966, he refused to hand the audience a clean moral. The “Good” wasn’t really good. The “Bad” looked almost restrained next to the Civil War’s industrial-scale carnage. And the “Ugly” drew your sympathy—even as you questioned why. Two years into the Competition and ... A Fistful of Discretion: The UK’s DMCC After Two Years
The Nanny State Goes Shopping
Antitrust used to ask a simple question: are firms making consumers worse off? Increasingly, it asks a different one: are consumers making the “wrong” choices? The consumer welfare standard (CWS) often draws criticism as narrow or inattentive to broader concerns. That familiar critique rests on a basic misunderstanding of what the standard is designed to ... The Nanny State Goes Shopping
Cloudy Logic: The DMA’s Search for a Gatekeeper
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) was supposed to target gatekeepers. Instead, it is chasing a market that has no gate. Last November, the European Commission opened three market investigations into whether Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure qualify as gatekeepers under the DMA—even as it acknowledged that no cloud service provider meets the act’s own ... Cloudy Logic: The DMA’s Search for a Gatekeeper
The Barriers Behind the Border
Not all trade barriers are created equal. The ones that matter most do not sit at the border. They sit inside markets, shaping who can compete—and who cannot—before competition even begins. The recently released 2026 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE) catalogs foreign barriers to U.S. exports, foreign direct investment, and electronic ... The Barriers Behind the Border
Acquihires and Other Antitrust Ghost Stories
Merger-control debates tend to repeat themselves. As new transaction forms emerge, regulators often move quickly to respond before harm becomes irreversible. Over the past decade, this pattern played out in debates over “killer acquisitions,” and earlier, minority shareholdings. Today, a similar dynamic surrounds so-called “acquihires.” Acquihires are transactions aimed primarily at acquiring a firm’s workforce, ... Acquihires and Other Antitrust Ghost Stories
When a Blue Checkmark Becomes a €120 Million Problem
The European Commission’s first major enforcement action under the Digital Services Act (DSA) offers an early glimpse of how the European Union intends to regulate large digital platforms—and how far that approach may diverge from the U.S. model. The DSA is an EU regulation governing how online intermediary services operate, including social-media platforms, online marketplaces, ... When a Blue Checkmark Becomes a €120 Million Problem
From Cure to Care: The DMA’s Chronic Regulation Problem
The neo-Brandeisian movement—emphasizing market structure and fairness over consumer welfare—has struggled to gain traction in several jurisdictions. In Europe, by contrast, lawmakers have codified its core premises. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) operationalizes this approach by prioritizing ex ante structural interventions intended to reshape rivalry in digital markets. The regime’s most significant feature lies not ... From Cure to Care: The DMA’s Chronic Regulation Problem
