Author Archives: admin

At the beginning of 2015, the Ministry of Customs and Trade issued the Commercial Advertisements and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation, which annulled and replaced the outdated 2003 regulation. The new regulation has removed the ban on comparative advertising and includes a provision which allows the use of the goods, trademarks, trade names and services of competitors in ads. The provision will enter into force on January 10 2016 and may result in legal disputes between competitors.

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November 16, 2015

At the beginning of 2015, Turkish Ministry of Customs and Trade issued a new regulation on the principles and procedures pertaining to advertising and abrogated and replaced the outdated regulation of 2003. The regulation ended the prohibition for comparative advertising and included a provision which allows using components related to competitors’ goods, trademarks, trade name and services in the advertisements. This provision will enter into force January 10, 2016. The comparative advertising by indicating the competitors’ names, trademarks, logos and titles will be legal in Turkey and this may yield to brand new legal disputes between competitors regarding their advertisements.
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November 5, 2015

FRANKFURT – A German private-sector competition watchdog said on November 5^th, 2015 it filed for an injunction against online fashion retailer Zalando, accusing the group of false advertising.

The Centre for Protection against Unfair Competition said in a statement that Zalando had in its online shop misrepresented how many pieces of certain items of clothing were still available, creating the impression that customers needed to act fast to buy them.
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November 2, 2015

James Marshall and Karen Leung say Hong Kong’s Competition Ordinance, which comes into force in December, 2015, could provide a vital boost to the so-called ‘sharing economy’

Hong Kong’s tech-savvy consumers expect personalised, convenient and cost-effective services, and the so-called “sharing economy” has developed to meet this demand. New technologies like Uber connect customers directly with suppliers – in this case, by linking passengers with self-employed taxi drivers in more than 300 cities worldwide.
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August 31, 2015

Section 5 of the FTC Act, in effect since 1914, authorizes the FTC to pursue claims of unfair competition beyond the reach of both the Sherman and Clayton Acts. 15 U.S.C. § 45(a)(1). Until now however, the FTC has been reluctant to issue public guidance on the parameters of conduct subject to Section 5, or the legal framework used to analyze and enforce such stand-alone claims.
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August 14, 2015

In a short statement issued yesterday, the FTC issued guidance regarding how it will interpret Section 5 of the FTC Act. Section 5 is a little-used antitrust statute for which the FTC has issued no guidance in the Act’s 100-year history. It states that “[u]nfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” are unlawful. When drafting the statute, however, Congress did not define specific acts or practices which would constitute unfair competition, leaving considerable uncertainty in the interpretation of the law.
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August 9, 2015

WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission in its 100-year history has never agreed on formal principles for policing companies engaged in “unfair” competition. That looks set to change.

Members of the FTC are close to a bipartisan agreement to lay out for the first time how the commission views its authority to bring cases against businesses it believes compete unfairly, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
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August 6, 2015

Competition and Markets Authority says companies abused position by raising prices of epilepsy drug by up to 2,600%
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June 29, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports researchers from Columbia Law School and Harvard University Business School claim Google is degrading its search results by delivering self-promoted content over results based on relevancy.

Sponsored by Yelp, a complainant listed in the EU’s antitrust case against Google, the study was conducted by former FTC advisor Tim Wu from Columbia Law School and Harvard Business School’s Michael Luca.
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June 12, 2015

Senate President Franklin Drilon expressed confidence on June 12, 2015 that the country’s preparedness for the ASEAN market integration has stepped up another notch with the Congress’ ratification of the Philippine Competition Act or the Anti-Trust Law.

Drilon said the approval of the Competition Act on June 10, 2015 “will greatly boost the nation’s preparations as Southeast Asian markets unite under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the year’s end.”
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