From the Editor: Spring 2008

David Evans, Apr 24, 2008

A colloquy of articles on the European Court of First Instance (CFI) judgment in Microsoft Corporation v. European Commission (EC Microsoft) begins the Spring 2008 issue of Competition Policy International. The CFI´s September 2007 judgment capped an almost decade-long tussle between two powerful entities and is a significant statement by this influential court on the state of Article 82 EC jurisprudence. The first three papers in this series focus on the refusal-to-supply side of the case. We begin with John Vickers who compares aspects of the Microsoft matter to the Commission´s investigation and ultimate undertaking with IBM in the early 1980s. Eleanor Fox comments on Vickers article and is followed by Daniel Beard. Articles by Hew Pate and Kelyn Bacon address the tying abuse side of the case. Maurits Dolmans, who played a significant role for RealNetworks and other interveners that sided with the Commission, will publish a comment on Pate´s article in a forthcoming release of Global Competition Policy, our online magazine.

A symposium on consumer protection and antitrust follows the colloquy on the EC Microsoft case. The field of competition law and economics has shown increased interest in consumer protection partly as a result of recent work by economists on behavioral economics. This relatively new discipline studies how people actually make decisions and examines the implications, rather than, as is customary in economics, examining the