Competition Law and Intellectual Property: A European Perspective

This book focuses on competition law, regulation of IPRs and their convergent roles for a Single Market in an essential field for EU growth and development. The term ‘intellectual property’ is used with reference to a large category of rights and a variety of legal regimes. The Authors’ contributions focus only on those characteristics of IPRs that are useful to explain their interaction with competition law in the relevant markets. The rapidly evolving technical environment and the related ‘Community acquis’ make a systemic and coherent interpretation of the two topics very complex, especially considering the de-centralization process of competition (modernization) and the lack of a single, effective European jurisdiction for IPRs, mainly due to the long tradition of the territoriality principle in copyright and patents. Part I aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the strategic relationship between IPRs and competition. Part II is devoted to the standard-setting process, which is the key for the access to effective interoperability of high-tech systems. Part III addresses some sector-specific issues (e.g., the pharmaceutical sector). Part IV regards general competition issue, also relevant for IPRs, as actions for damages in the private-enforcement context. Finally, Parts V and VI contain insights into issues related to IPRs or competition law from a comparative-law perspective and that of several national legal systems.