The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Comments to the Commission’s Horizontal Guidelines”Standardization

This note sets out my comments to Section 7 of the Guidelines on the applicability of Article 101 of the TFEU to horizontal co-operation agreements (“Guidelines”) and, in particular, to the criteria for assessment of standardization agreements which (a) involve intellectual property rights (“IPR”), (b) establish technical interoperability and compatibility between products and systems, and (c) give rise to a de facto industry standard.

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