SUDDEN TERMINATION OF ESTABLISHED COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Article L. 442-1, II of the Commercial Code is applicable when the court is not called upon to rule on the conditions under which a company withdraws from a grouping of which it remains a member, but only on the termination of the business relationship arising from the contracts for the provision of services entered into with the company at the head of the grouping.
Cass. com., 4 September 2024, No 23-10.446
ABUSE OF DOMINANT POSITION
Not every issue of, or partly of, access necessarily implies the application of the conditions of the Bronner ruling, in particular when the practice in question consists of autonomous behavior which, while it may have the same exclusionary effects, differs in its constituent elements from a refusal to supply.
CJEU, Case C-48/22 P Google LLC, Alphabet Inc, Judgment of 10 September 2024, LawLex202400006327JBJ
The conduct of Google, which, consisting in treating results from comparison shopping services differently depending on whether they originated from Google’s comparison shopping service or from competing comparison shopping services, in terms of display and positioning on the general results pages, and led to a difference in treatment in the form of Google’s favoring its own comparison shopping service, liable to lead to a weakening of competition on the market by reason of a combination of specific circumstances, can be characterized as behavior that does not fall within the scope of competition on the merits, where, moreover, it was implemented through the use of leveraging, whereby Google used its dominant position on the upstream market for general online search services, characterized by high barriers to entry, in order to gain competitive advantages on the downstream market for specialized product search services, on which it did not hold such a position, by favoring its own comparison shopping service.
STATE AID
Tax rulings which reduce the annual amount of tax which Apple are required to pay in Ireland – as compared, in particular, to non-integrated companies whose taxable profit reflects prices determined on the market and negotiated at arm’s length involve different treatment that can, in essence, be classified as a derogation and as discriminatory, which is not justified by the nature or general scheme of the tax system in question.
CJEU Case C‑465/20 P Apple, Judgment of 10 September 2024,
EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTION
An exclusive distributor whose contract was concluded intuitu personae and which, contrary to its contractual obligations, only informed its supplier of the change in the majority composition of its shareholding, whereas it was required to obtain the supplier’s prior authorization, cannot contest the application of the resolutory clause providing for this eventuality, even if it only occurred six months after the facts.
CA Paris, 4 September 2024, No. 21/19676
