In late November, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No. 1 and Savings and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/1226) were published. They bring most digital markets and competition sections of the Act (that were not already in force) into force on 1 January 2025. The new digital markets regime gives the…
The UK government has published a consultation on the new subscription contracts regime under the Digital Markets, Competition and Digital Markets Act 2024. It seeks views on how the regime will work in practice. The feedback will inform secondary legislation and guidance, with the regime planned to come into force in 2026. Cooling-off rights: return…
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The European Commission has fined Meta €797.72 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers. In June 2021, the Commission opened formal proceedings into possible anti-competitive conduct of Facebook….
Following investigation at European level, the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network of national consumer authorities and the European Commission have notified the online marketplace Temu that some of its practices infringe EU consumer law. The CPC Network directed Temu to bring those practices in line with EU consumer laws. Temu remains under investigation and was…
UK law New rule restricting broadcast ads for qualifying cryptoassets in force The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) has published a new rule that explicitly bans ads for certain types of cryptoasset products from being broadcast to mainstream, non-specialist audiences. These products were already subject to such a restriction under rule 14.5.4 of the…
The Court of Justice has ruled in Case C-264/23 | Booking.com and Booking.com (Deutschland) that price parity clauses cannot, in principle, be classified as “ancillary restraints” under EU competition law. Booking.com is incorporated under Netherlands law with its registered office in Amsterdam. It offers a worldwide online intermediation service to reserve accommodation. Hotels pay commission…
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled in the case of Case C-768/21 | Land Hessen. A German savings bank found that one of its employees had accessed a customer’s personal data on several occasions without authorisation. The savings bank did not inform the customer of this, as its data protection officer…
UK law Patents Court considers ongoing restrictions in confidentiality agreement In Alcatel Lucent SAS v Amazon Digital UK Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 2339 (Pat), the Patents Court considered the extent of a confidentiality order. The case arose in the context of an action against Amazon for infringement of standard essential patents owned by the…
The General Court has issued its ruling in Case T-334/19 | Google and Alphabet v Commission (Google AdSense for Search). The General Court has annulled a fine of nearly €1.5 billion on Google, even though it upheld the majority of the European Commission’s findings. It has annulled the fine because it says that the Commission…
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The General Court has issued its ruling in Case T-671/19 | Qualcomm v Commission. It reduced a European Commission-imposed fine of € 242 million to approximately € 238.7 million. Qualcomm is a US company selling chipsets and licensing system software for use in mobile phones, tablets, laptops, data modules and other consumer electronics. After a…