GERADIN PARTNERS

Great article in Kauppalehti, the leading financial newspaper, about Mikko Alkio, Christian Wik and their team joining GERADIN PARTNERS to set up our Helsinki office. One of our objectives for 2025 is to further our relationships with other law firms across Europe and the rest of the world as we can now assist in five key legal markets: Brussels, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Helsinki. We have a team of 10 partners and 25 competition lawyers covering all aspects of competition law, and many industry sectors. If you would like to talk to us, let us know.

I am delighted to let you know that Dr. Daniel Mandrescu will join GERADIN PARTNERS on 1 October 2024. Daniel is an Assistant Professor of law at Leiden University where he specialized on competition law and platform regulation. He is one of the very best young scholars in this space, and will further strengthen our team of tech experts. Daniel will be based in our Amsterdam office. Daniel Mandrescu; Stijn Huijts; Ruben Elkerbout; Saimi Merenlahti; Philine Wassenaar; Mattijs Baneke https://lnkd.in/enAU9Kvi

Intéressant article du journal Le Monde au sujet des actions collectives au Royaume-Uni contre Google pour ses pratiques anticoncurrentielles. J'y suis interrogé s'agissant de notre action collective barry rodger v. Google visant à obtenir compensation au bénéfice des développeurs d'application pour les abus pratiqués par le Google Play Store. https://lnkd.in/e4ypfjRP

The sending of a statement of objections by the Competition and Markets Authority to Google is another important development in Google's adtech saga. GERADIN PARTNERS played a key role in this saga, as we represented complainants not only in this CMA case, but also in the Autorité de la concurrence's investigation, which led to a decision in 2021, and in the European Commission's ad tech investigation, which is near completion. We also represent the class representative in the Google's damages case before the Competition Appeal Tribunal and we represent 34 publishers in an opt-in action in the Netherlands. This represents 7 years of work. Thanks to our tenacious clients from whom we learned so much.

Please have a look at my latest blog post on the ten reasons why Apple's App Store terms are (still) not compliant with the DMA. It is extraordinary that 6 months after the 7 March 2024 deadline for compliance, Apple is still far off the mark. Worse, Apple's terms have become increasingly complex, not to say incomprehensible. https://lnkd.in/eqX4Ajj9

The politicisation of DG COMP's chief economist position is a tragedy. The EC's failure to appoint Fiona Scott Morton was already a mistake as she would have been a great chief economist (and the decision was taken for the wrong reasons). But this is now starting again. Absurd!

In June, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on the appeals of the European Commission, Servier, and six appellants representing generic manufacturers in the Perindopril case. The Court's findings span across 9 judgments of considerable length and complexity. In my latest blog for Kluwer Competition Law Blog, I have summarised the key points and provided some commentary on what I see as the main developments to note: - Object restrictions can be found in complex arrangements. There is no "quick look" test for object restrictions. It maybe necessary to conduct detailed analysis of agreements, their objectives, and the legal and economic context to find that they did, in fact, restrict competition by object. - Clarity on ancillary restraints following Superleague and Royal Antwerp: object restrictions can still be assessed against the ancillary restraints doctrine, even if they cannot be "objectively justified" under the Wouters / Meca-Medina case-law. - The flexibility of the concept of "agreement" in competition law stretches both ways: an anti-competitive agreement that infringes Article 101 can consist of a single clause in a much larger contract (see e.g. the non-compete in the Portugal Telecom case), but it can also consist of several written contracts, as is the case for the 3-contract arrangement between Servier and Krka, which the CJEU found to give rise to a sharing of markets. - Market definition in the case of pharmaceutical products: Economic substitutability wins over functional substitutability. The blog can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gkj5rxX3 With thanks to Nils Imgarten

I am delighted to let you know that Marie-Laure Combet has joined GERADIN PARTNERS' Paris office as partner. Marie-Laure is the eighth competition partner in the firm and the second in Paris. She is an extremely versatile lawyer with over 20 years experience. We will make further announcements in the coming weeks about additional hires across our offices to pursue our expansion. 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀

Apple's new App Store fees to "comply with the DMA" are again highly unsatisfactory. Far off the mark! Won't get them any relief. https://lnkd.in/eXNXmBXT