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ARTICLE · 05 OCTOBER 2017

European General Court Rules (Again) On Mandatory Access And Interoperability In Software Industry

Jones Day
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The European General Court's ("GC") decision relates to a complaint filed with the European Commission ("EC") by Contact Software, a German software supplier of Product Data Management ("PDM").

European UnionAntitrust/Competition Law
Philipp Werner
Philipp Werner
Yvan Desmedt
Yvan Desmedt
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In Short

The Ruling: A recent European General Court decision provided valuable guidance on applying abuse of dominance rules (Article 102 TFEU) in the context of software products and provided some welcome clarifications regarding the market definition for software products and the indispensability criteria, an essential element for finding an abusive refusal to supply.

The Result: The General Court rejected a vendor-specific product market definition. It also held that interface information is not indispensable for downstream competitors, if customers can obtain the information themselves through licensing.

Looking Ahead: The GC's judgment is of particular interest for software companies. It shows the GC's willingness to take into account the reality of the software sector in applying general competition law principles and raises an additional hurdle for narrow market definitions. It also confirmed the EC's restrictive interpretation of the

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