EUROPEAN UNION
Appeal Dismissed in Abuse of Dominance Case Against Recycling Firm
The European Court of First Instance (CFI) has dismissed an appeal brought by Duales System Deutschland GmbH (DSD) against two decisions of the European Commission finding that DSD abused its dominant position in the German market for the collection and recycling of packaging materials. The Commission ruled in 2001 that DSD had abused its dominant position when it charged the full fee for the use of its trademarked "Green Dot" label on materials that were collected and recycled by its competitors. The Commission applied the principle of "no service, no fee" and required DSD to cease charging a fee where the take-back and recovery obligations have been properly fulfilled by a third party. The Commission also ruled that existing service agreements between DSD and its waste collecting partners were exempt from the fee restrictions subject to the conditions that DSD allowed competing service providers to
