The German journal for competition law “Neue Zeitschrift für Kartellrecht (NZKart)” has today published an article by Mette Alfter, Dr Stefan Lochner and Marius Benden from Frontier’s Competition Practice.

The article discusses the economic implications of the Immowelt vs ImmoScout24 case. This case lead to the first final ruling based on the new tipping paragraph in German competition law (§20 Abs. 3a GWB). The tipping paragraph enables courts and the Federal Cartel Office to intervene in markets before market leaders become dominant due to tipping.

In their article Mette, Stefan and Marius

• provide an overview of the paragraph and its application in the Immowelt vs ImmoScout24 ruling;
• explain which structural market conditions determine the likelihood of tipping; and
• analyse the paragraph’s impact from an economic point of view.

They conclude that the tipping paragraph should only be applied where a certain competitive conduct would cause tipping and where tipping would not happen in the absence of this conduct. In practice, this will only be the case in a few constellations.

You can access the full article here. 

Frontier regularly advises on competition issues, such as abuse of market power. 

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