Professor Nicolas PETIT gave a numerous presentations and speeches during Summer 2014. The materials may be found here:
1. A paper arguing that the TeliaSonera judgment on price squeezes has been in part repealled by subsequent case-law. The paper resorts to a short numerical example to show the flaw of finding a price squeeze in the presence of positive margins. The final version of this paper was published in the “Revue du Droit des Industries de Réseaux“, a new journal on the regulation network industries. See here: Price Squeezes with Positive Margins – Economic and Legal Anatomy of a Zombie (Final)
2. A presentation on the General Court’s Judgment in Intel, where he argueS that the Guidance Paper is not yet dead. In his view, the impact of Intel is confined to leveraging rebates – ie retroactive rebates – which are subject to a quasi per se illegality standard. As for the other rebates – eg incremental rebates – they remain subject to a rule of reason standard, though the assessment method need not be quantitative. The General Court also has generalized the Article 102(3) defense in abuse of dominance cases, though it is complex to see if this will be practical. The paper concludes with an optimistic note on the future of the Guidance Paper, and discusses the more philosophical point of whether Article 102 should seek to protect competitive OUTCOMEs or rather the PROCESS of competition. Nicolas submits that if 102 protects the PROCESS of competition, this should not dispense agencies and complainants to bring a certain degree of economic evidence in support of their allegations. See here: Intel v Commission – ABC Seminar – 10 07 14
3. A presentation on “Problem Practices”, ie practices that do not fall neatly within the conventional antitrust prohibitions: planned obsolescence strategies, most unfavored customer clauses, IP tracking- pricing, etc. He gave a speech on this at the CCP (University of East Anglia) Annual conference on Problem Markets arguing that existing EU rules can be flexibly stretched to capture such practices, and that we do not need a Section 5-type provision in our legal framework. In other words, he submits that there is no gap within the EU competition toolbox. See here: Problem Practices – CCP
4. A presentation on the principles of effectiveness and procedural autonomy in EU competition law given before an audience of judges at EUI as part of a seminar hosted by Giorgio Monti. See here: The Principles of Equivalence and Effectiveness -Petit
