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Govaere, Inge --- "Abuses of Dominant Position, Intellectual Property Rights and Monopolization in EU Competition Law: Some Thoughts on a Possible Course of Action" [2010] ELECD 361; in Mateus, M. Abel; Moreira, Teresa (eds), "Competition Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Competition Law and Economics

Editor(s): Mateus, M. Abel; Moreira, Teresa

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848449992

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Abuses of Dominant Position, Intellectual Property Rights and Monopolization in EU Competition Law: Some Thoughts on a Possible Course of Action

Author(s): Govaere, Inge

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

13. Abuses of dominant position,
intellectual property rights and
monopolization in EU competition
law: some thoughts on a possible
course of action
Inge Govaere

1. INTRODUCTION

It is not easy, not to say virtually impossible, to give an answer to the
following question originally listed in the conference program: `How the
present debate and major conclusions on abuses of dominant position
and monopolization will influence the future implementation of EU com-
petition policy, from a legal perspective'. For one thing, Emil Paulis has
already explained that there is still a lot of debate going on and very few
conclusions to be drawn as to the direction the modernization process of
Article 82 TEC should take.1 In the current stage of debate it seems there-
fore more prudent to limit the ambitions of this chapter to putting forward
some thoughts as to how this all might influence a future course of action,
in particular in so far as the IP­antitrust interface debate in the EU is
concerned. A second caveat concerns the attempt to adopt a strictly legal
approach, complementary to the contribution by Patrick Rey which deals
more specifically with the economic perspective.2 With the plea for a less
formalistic and more rule of reason oriented approach to Article 82 TEC,
including the possibility of an efficiency defense, it will of course become
all the more difficult clearly to separate the two perspectives in practice.
In legal terms the prevailing conclusion to be drawn so far from ...