Latest blog articles

  • The disputes concerning FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs) are critical legal issues that dominate the development of the standard-implementing industries like the telecommunication industry. Recently, the patent owners of standard-essential patents tend not to license to rival...

  • This blog analyses the obligation of Albania to approximate its existing and future competition law with the EU competition acquis, including the need to transpose the ECN + Directive in the pre-accession stage. Then, the blog discusses the approach taken by the Albanian Competition Authority (ACA)...

  • Data is intangible, non-rivalrous, and produced in vast quantities with little to no incentive. How then can it be a source of competition issues in digital markets? This blog seeks to explain.

  • Data spaces are an important initiative to promote data sharing within the EU and across sectors and to make more data available for the benefit of society at large. At the same time, however, data spaces could be challenging under competition law.

  • In the digital economy, algorithms are the new air- they are everywhere, essential for survival online. Algorithms manage every keystroke, every search, every step on the web. Algorithms are a sequence of instructions to solve a problem and take decisions. Online platforms use algorithms in every...

  • As we all can experience in our daily basis, we are living through the age of digitalization. Goods that were formerly tangible (as paperback books) or that at least had a tangible medium (as cartridge-based videogames), are now available in full-digital versions. Moreover, many physical goods are...

  • Article 17 Digital Single Market Directive necessitated many online platforms to have an upload filter to prevent copyright infringements. The rationale behind this was to solve the ‘value gap’ that the music industry believed to exist between revenues generated by music-streaming platforms and...

  • Disruptions of supply—as opposed to refusals to supply—are a suitable qualification for the ‘open early, closed late’ scenarios often observed in the digital economy. The case law, however, does not always distinguish clearly between the two types of conduct. This blog post traces the evolution of...

  • Some conducts encountered in digital markets, e.g. killer acquisitions, self-promotion and marketing strategies, non-transparent and discriminatory interfaces, signify a need for ex ante regulation, as widely acknowledged. The European Commission, UK Government and US Senators proposed legislative...

  • Representing the prototype of multi-sided platforms, app stores are at the forefront of the debate on digital markets. Several regulatory proposals place on app stores neutrality obligations vis-à-vis third parties.  Are EU and US competition laws utterly unfit to tackle platform-related behaviours...