This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

GDL Law Notes GDL EU Law Notes

Competition Ii Notes

Updated Competition Ii Notes

GDL EU Law Notes

GDL EU Law

Approximately 409 pages

A collection of the best GDL notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through applications from top students and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor". In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of GDL notes available in the UK this year. This collection of GDL notes is fully updated for recent exams, also making them the most up-to-date GDL study materials ...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our GDL EU Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

  • Market dominance – usually single undertakings but can also be joint dominance by different undertakings acting together – either as part of a business entity/corporate group – but sometimes independent – Societa Italiana Vetro – 3 Italian glass manufacturers – breach of 101/102

  • Often undertaking is dominant and part of cartel – breach of 101/102 - United Brands Co

Several things that the Commission or an NCA must establish - what market the undertaking is operating; that the undertaking is dominant in that market; that the conduct amounts to abuse of that position; that the abuse is capable of affecting trade btw MSs

What is the market?: determine exactly what market the undertaking is operating – economic/complex concept

  • So long as undertaking can justify behaviour on objective grounds – unlikely to be caught

  • Notice on the definition of the Relevant Market for the Purpose of Community Competition Law: product and geographic dimension – RPM/RGM – but also ‘relevant temporal market’ (following United Brands and Euroemballage Corn and Continental Can Co Ltd)

Relevant Product Market (RPM)

  • Often difficult/highly contentious

  • Hilti AG v Commission: produced nail guns – company tried to show that RPM for nail guns was the general market of industrial fastners, not just nail guns themselves – if broader RPM accepted then Hilti had small market share: CJ found that nail guns were sufficiently unique/separate – in smaller market they were dominant – narrow definition of market : the smaller the marker the more likely there will be dominance

Interchangeability or product substitution

Products will be in same RPM if they could be interchanged with one another/perform similar function

  • United Brands: question of whether bananas were part of overall fruit market – bananas soft/seedless and so could be eaten by the very old or the sick – so CJ decided it was in a specialised sub-market

  • Hilti : low cross elasticity of demand so found to be dominant: took in physical characteristics/functions

Demand Substitutability: Whether consumers are willing to buy another product – Notice on the definition of the relevant market -sets out a test – SSNIP: effect of small change in price to demand on demand for alternative

Supply substitutability: how easy it is for rival manufacturers to compete: Continental Can: cans for meat and fish and medal lids for jars – supply substitutability was high, reducing RTM – so not dominance – Microsoft – large share of software market and freezing out competitors with media player bundling – low substitutability

The Spare parts market

  • Complementary products which need replacing e.g. ink cartridges – need to establish if they are part of the same market as the primary product – can amount to a sub-market in itself (consumables)

  • Hilti – tried to argue that retailers selling its guns had to sell nail cartridges/nails too – ‘bundling’

  • Hugin – Swedish firm manufacturing cash registers – Liptons was a company who serviced the registers – couldn’t use any spare parts other than those produced by Hugin – separate market for spare parts – Hugin was dominant in it

Examples of RPM decisions

  • The RPM as deduced from the intended use of the productMichelin no interchangeability btw different types of tyres -so the RPM was the market for replacement tyres for heavy vehicles

  • The RPM as deduced from marketing strategiesBBI/Boosey & Hawkes – different consumers/marketing strategies distinguished British brass band instrument market from the main brass instrument market

  • Market power alone may be enough – BPB Industries and British Gypsum – plaster board/wet plaster – commission couldn’t decide if it was the same product market – didn’t concern themselves with precise definition of RPM – had power to allocate supplies – had to be judged objectively – was dominant

Relevant Geographic Market (RGM)

  • Can generally mean the whole internal market – but can be interpreted more narrowly – United Brandsan area where the objective conditions of competition applying to the product in question are the same for all traders’ – here found to cover 6 MS – France, Italy and UK excluded as had special outside arrangements

  • Not just geographical area – but volume of trade - Michelin –Netherlands found to be ‘substantial part’ of the market – and the UK in British telecom – in RTE & ITP (McGill Tv Guide) - it was Eire

  • Regions of MS have been a substantial part - e.g. Continental Can - NW Germany – but in Hugin SE England was not a substantial part and in Alsatel v Novasum - region of France was not substantial

  • Even ports/airpotys with large volume of trade could be substantial – B&I line plc...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our GDL EU Law Notes.