Competition Law and Intellectual Property. The European Perspective - Giandonato Caggiano, Gabriella Muscolo, Marina Tavassi

This book focuses on the convergent roles of competition law and regulation of IPRs in the context of the European Single Market. The perspectives of the expert authors – judges, academics, and lawyers who gathered in Rome in 2009 for the Annual Conference of the Association of European Competition Law Judges – disentangle and efficiently recombine the diverse threads woven into this complex pattern: the rapidly evolving technical environment, the decentralization process inherent in the ‘Community acquis’, and the lack of a single effective European jurisdiction for IPRs. Particular attention is paid to the latter, with its additional and unnecessary costs of enforcement through duplicate efforts, and divergent outcomes in multiple litigations in national jurisdictions, making litigation strategies an exercise in forum shopping and inducing delay strategies. Among the issues examined are the following:

• access to effective interoperability of high-tech systems;

• sector-specific issues of technological development (e.g., the pharmaceutical sector);

• actions for damages in the private enforcement context;

• the Commission’s practice of clearing mergers and introducing remedies regarding IPRs;

• block exemption regulations;

• the interdependence of public investment, state aid rules, and risk of cartels;

• trading platforms enabling financial investments for patent pools and innovation brokering;

• the European Patent system;

• relevance of user and consumer rights regulation and public service obligations; and

• interpretation of substantive patent law in actions under the IP Enforcement Directive.

As a detailed analysis and clarification of one crucial way – that of intellectual property rights regulation – in which the concepts and principles of competition law are internalized through mechanisms for the gradual opening up of markets, this book clears new ground for steps forward in an essential area for EU growth and development. It will be of great value to lawyers, academics, and policymakers in both fields.

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