A Right To Commit? A New French Perspective On Antitrust Commitments

By: Thomas Elkins (Linklaters)

There are times when a competition regulator or Authority wins the case, but loses in practice. This is what happened in the legal conflict between the French Competition Authority (Autorité de la Concurrence, AdC) and multinational consumer electronics and entertainment conglomerate Sony before the French Constitutional Court (Conseil Constitutionnel). Although the Court sided with the AdC in rejecting Sony’s allegations regarding the constitutional validity of a specific provision in the French Commercial Code, its findings and arguments are likely to have an impact in the way the AdC will be able to handle future proceedings. Author Thomas Elkins provides more detail on in this blog post for Linklaters, from a basic outline of the facts, to the implications of this decision…

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