In the last months, the Landgericht Düsseldorf (District Court of Düsseldorf – LG Düsseldorf) has handed down 10 judgments dealing with standard essential patents (SEPs) in the smart phone sector. While not all judgments have been published yet, cases 4a O 17/17 and 4b O 4/17 answered a number of fundamental questions as to how … Continue Reading
The General Court dismissed the appeal by Groupe Canal + against the European Commission’s decision accepting Paramount’s commitments in the cross-border pay-TV investigation (T-873/16 Groupe Canal +). It held that territorial restrictions leading to a partitioning of the internal market could be considered as by-object infringements of competition law, thereby rejecting arguments of copyright law … Continue Reading
In November 2018, following an in-depth Phase 2 investigation, the European Commission (“Commission”) unconditionally approved the acquisition of Tele2 NL by T-Mobile NL, respectively the fourth and third largest players in the Dutch retail mobile telecoms market. The merged entity remains the third largest player in this market after KPN and VodafoneZiggo. This transaction is the first “four-to-three” … Continue Reading
On the 10th October 2018, BEREC (the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications) launched its public consultation on the ‘Data Economy’. This comes at a time when different regulators are increasingly discussing the importance of big data, including the opportunities and risks that it brings about, how these may evolve, and how (and increasingly … Continue Reading
[Updated] On 1 August 2018, the German government was set to block a foreign investment in a German company under the new foreign direct investment (FDI) screening rules for the first time. However, the veto was not required as, on the same day, the Chinese investor withdrew from the deal. Companies involved in M&A activities … Continue Reading
The European Commission published its highly anticipated Communication Setting out the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents at the end of 2017, as part of a package to protect Europe’s know-how and innovation leadership (see Commission Press Release Intellectual property: Protecting Europe’s know-how and innovation leadership). The first section proposes concrete measures to improve the … Continue Reading
On 20 November, Covington hosted its webinar looking at developments in Net Neutrality and Zero-rating from both a US and a European perspective. Our presenters included ex-FCC Bureau Chief, Partner Matt DelNero from our DC office, and ex-DG Competition Head of Unit, Partner Kevin Coates and Senior Associate Siobhan Kahmann from our Brussels office. The … Continue Reading
On 27 October 2015, the European Parliament adopted the new Telecoms Single Market legislation without a number of proposed amendments relating to net neutrality. As a result, while the Regulation requires Internet service providers (“ISPs”) to “treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, … Continue Reading
