Competition law

Case Law, CDSM Directive, Digital Single Market, France, Press Publishers ’ Right, Remuneration (equitable)

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As I posted previously on this blog (here), French press publishers’ unions and the news agency Agence France Presse (‘AFP’) filed a successful request for an interim injunction against Google before the French Competition Authority, in their battle to obtain remuneration for online uses of their publications (Decision 20-MC-01 of 9 April 2020). Google had been manoeuvring…

CDSM Directive, Digital Single Market, European Union, France, Legislative process, Press Publishers ’ Right, Remuneration (equitable)

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Overview After fierce lobbying, European press publishers, backed by the French government, obtained the much criticized press publishers’ right (see e.g. here; here; and here) in Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). The objective of this new right is to allow the media…

Case Law, Collective management, Latvia, Remedies

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When considering whether a collective management organisation had abused its dominant position by imposing unreasonably high licence fees, it was justifiable to compare its fees with the fees in other markets. These markets should be comparable to the Latvian market in order to achieve the correct outcome. As well as having a similar gross domestic…

Case Law, Collective management, Spain

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In a recent decision, the Spanish Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), imposed a fine of 3.1 million Euros on the Spanish collecting society, SGAE, for demanding an excessive fee for concert licensing. This decision is of particular interest because the Spanish competition authority has taken a new approach when interpreting the European law on the method of analysing the fairness…