Can suppliers prohibit their authorised distributors from selling luxury products on third-party platforms such as Amazon or eBay? In its judgement of 6 December 2017 (Case C-230/16 – Coty), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) finally had the chance to shed some light on this highly-debated issue. Both suppliers and distributors have waited with great anticipation for a clarification from Luxembourg. The ECJ now took a supplier-friendly stance and confirmed that platform bans for luxury goods are not per se anticompetitive.

In light of the recent media reports on possible cartel allegations against German car manufacturers, our partner Anna Blume Huttenlauch was interviewed by Deutsche Welle on the fine line between legal cooperations among competitors and illegal collusion as well as potential fines and other liability risks for companies involved in cartels.

Link to the interview in English
Link to the entire program in English

What can be inferred for the Facebook investigation from the report on competition and data co-published by the Bundeskartellamt?

The investigation of the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) against Facebook because of suspicions that Facebook may have abused a possibly dominant position has prompted a considerable echo, not only among antitrust lawyers. The FCO is currently investigating (i) whether Facebook may have a dominant position in the market for social networks and (ii) whether it may have abused such position with its specific terms of service on the use of user data.

Over the last two weeks a number of important events for the antitrust community took place. Competition officials from across Europe shared some interesting insights and outlooks on 2017 which we would like to pass on to you in order to alert you to some developments to expect.

Dr. Roland M. Stein and Dr. Anna Blume Huttenlauch spoke about public procurement and antitrust compliance at a conference organised by forum vergabe e.V. The conference took place on 12 October 2016 in Berlin.

Article on the Facebook investigation by Dr. Anna Blume Huttenlauch published in Competition Policy International of 15 August 2016

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has presented its long awaited proposal for the draft legislation implementing the European Commission’s damages directive (the Directive) into German law (link). The draft legislation (the Proposal) is part of a wider reform of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (ARC), which addresses the following aspects:

• Implementation of the Directive

• Closing the so-called “sausage gap”

• Dealing with certain challenges brought about by digital transformation.

Aside from the political, social, cultural and economic dimensions that have been debated extensively over the past months, the vote of the British people to leave the EU will have legal implications that cannot be fully grasped yet in their full scope. Nonetheless, companies on both sides of the channel must already prepare today.