Class actions in which damages can be awarded on a collective basis are still a relatively new phenomenon in Europe, with the UK, Portuguese and Dutch opt-out collective action regimes seen as frontrunners. It has dawned on policymakers and lawyers alike that damages can be suffered across a broad and disparate group of victims, which makes it less likely that compensation will ever be sought and granted. Opt-out collective actions have been introduced to address this issue. However, such new rules incubate and grow in existing legal frameworks built on years of experience. It can be difficul ..read more

If Vodafone and Three merge, it will be the first time that the UK telecoms market would have less than four network operators since Orange and One2One entered the market in the early 1990s. The CMA would nowadays be expected to block 4-to-3 mergers, especially where there is little chance of a new market entrant, but this deal is occurring in a highly regulated industry. We should expect this deal to be treated as being in a class of its own. We are still a couple of months away from the CMA’s provisional decision in this case, so we do not know whether the concerns raised in the Phase 1 dec ..read more

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (“DMCC”) Act is finally now law in the UK. The King signed his assent today (although his views on conflicts of interest in the ad tech stack are still unknown). The legislation was passed in the “wash-up” process on the final day of this Parliament and the country is now in election mode for the next six weeks. Some of us competition lawyers know a lot more about the intricacies of parliamentary processes than we used to. Following an important piece of legislation through Parliament has been fascinating. It has been a highlight of my career to ..read more

Spectrum is all around us. These invisible waves are essential for devices that communicate wirelessly. Whether using a mobile phone to make a phone call, send a text message or browse the web, the device will use spectrum to connect to a local mast and carry out your connection command. Only a finite amount of spectrum is available. All other aspects of running a mobile network can be bought – masts, wires, electronics, land, contracts, experienced management, branding, and arguably even customers. But, new frequencies cannot be plucked out of thin air. Its allocation in the UK is carefully ..read more

Partners Damien Geradin and Stijn Huijts had the pleasure of sitting down with Joost Rietveld, an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the UCL School of Management, University College London, to discuss his fascinating insights into platform competition and strategy. Joost has been a major contributor to the public debate in this area in the past few years. He is an expert on platform competition and platform strategy—topics on which he has published research articles in top academic journals in the fields of business strategy, innovation management, and entrepreneurship. He also co ..read more

On 25 March 2024, the Commission announced that it had opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into three of the companies that have been designated as gatekeepers, namely Alphabet, Apple, and Meta. These investigations concern various issues, including rules on steering in app stores, choice screens for browsers, self-preferencing in general search, and data combination. Moreover, the Commission announced that it has taken investigatory steps relating to Apple’s new fee structure for alternative app stores and Amazon’s ranking practices on its marketplace. In ..read more

The UK’s mobile sector is highly competitive.  Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, has spent the last few decades carefully designing spectrum auctions and other measures to foster fierce competition among the four mobile network operators. I’m currently paying £10 ($12.70) per month for unlimited 5G data on the best network for coverage. When I was at university, I was paying over £60 in today’s prices. This allowed me to send 15 text messages per month, make a limited number of voice calls, and use no data whatsoever on a 2G network. Now the CMA has issued its phase 1 decision in a merger c ..read more

Today, the large digital platforms that have been designated by the European Commission as “gatekeepers” must start to comply with the Digital Markets Act (or DMA). This marks a milestone for businesses operating in the EU because the DMA will resolve many challenges they face in their relations with gatekeepers, such as lack of access to data, limited interoperability, and unfair contractual terms.   The Commission has designated as gatekeepers Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and ByteDance for the following services: The above services are now subject to a series of obligations ..read more

Yesterday, Apple made an important announcement regarding changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union in response to the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”). This announcement covers a lot of ground and should be read in parallel with a number of accompanying documents. In this blog post, I discuss my first (and therefore provisional) reactions to this announcement as it concerns Apple’s new terms for the distribution of iOS apps in the EU. App distribution is a subject we have dealt with on many occasions on this blog to express our frustration with Apple’s unwillingness to accom ..read more

You're currently a free subscriber. Upgrade your subscription to get access to the rest of this post and other paid-subscriber only content. Upgrade subscription The post The Meta judgment on the interplay between competition law and (data protection) regulation appeared first on The Platform Law Blog ..read more