GCR Live Antitrust and Technology 2012

Chaired by Thomas Vinje, partner, chair of global antitrust practice, Clifford Chance LLP

Keynote speaker:

Per Hellström, Head of Unit, Antitrust; IT, Internet and Consumer Electronics, DG Comp, European Commission

Confirmed speakers include -

Jean-Yves Art, Microsoft

Oliver Bethell, Google

Simon Citron, Yahoo!

Miranda Cole, Covington & Burling LLP

Maurits Dolmans, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP

Christian Duvernoy, WilmerHale

Amelia Fletcher, Office of Fair Trading

Mathew Heim, Qualcomm

Jenni Lukander, Nokia

Robert Mahnke, eBay, USA

Robert O'Donoghue, Brick Court Chambers

Miguel Odriozola, Clifford Chance LLP

Jon Orszag, Compass Lexecon

Gunnar Pampel, German Federal Cartel Office

Dallis Radamaker, Philips International B.V.

Alvaro Ramos, Cisco Systems Belgium BVBA/SPRL

Pierre Régibeau, Charles River Associates

Christian Riis-Madsen, O'Melveny & Myers LLP

Scott Sher, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Claudia Tapia Garcia, Research in Motion (RIM)

Craig Waldman, Jones Day

08.30 Registration and coffee

09.00 Chairman’s introduction

09.05 Keynote speech

09.30 Should antitrust authorities intervene in fast moving IT markets?

• Is there too much attention spent on IT markets because they are attention-grabbing?
• Do antitrust authorities intervene too quickly? Do IT markets really move that rapidly?
• Have recent examples proven that antitrust authorities intervene too quickly, or not quickly enough?
• How can the right balance be found?

10.30 Coffee break

10.50 Differences in EU and US IT antitrust enforcement

• How has the Obama administration tackled the IT industry?
• Are there important differences in approach between international antitrust enforcement regimes? Do those differences (if any) merely exist in theory or also in practice?
• Does the recent enforcement practice suggest there is more common ground in antitrust enforcement or merger review?
• How significant is cooperation between jurisdictions in the field of antitrust enforcement in the IT sector?

12.00 Antitrust standards for standards in the horizontal guidelines: the right approach?

• Do the horizontal guidelines reflect the right approach to IP licensing in the context of standards organisations?
• How can the horizontal guidelines be improved?
• Do the horizontal guidelines try to offer an antitrust fix to what is really a problem of IP law?
• Have the horizontal guidelines had any practical impact to date and if so how?

13.00 Lunch

14.10 Pricing and bundling of IT products – drawing the line between lawful and unlawful behaviour

• Do antitrust rules related to pricing and discounting provide too restrictive a framework for the IT industry?
• Which types of discounts present an antitrust risk?
• What are the limits on bundling of IT products, and how do you distinguish bundling from product enhancement?
• Do the existing antitrust rules provide sufficient guidance?
• Do cases such as Microsoft and Intel take the right approach, and what is their value as guiding precedent?
• How will antitrust rules on pricing apply to the evolving pricing models in the IT sector (pay as you go, subscription pricing of software and hardware)

15.10 Tea break

15.30 Merger review in the IT sector: too much or too little scrutiny?

• Recent merger review in the IT sector
• Perceived trends in IT M&A and how the Commission is responding
• The relevance of remedies
• Transatlantic cooperation
• Are recent authority decisions in the field of mergers the right ones?
• Are IT sector markets becoming too concentrated?
• Is there too much interventionism and shortsightedness in IT merger review?
• Issues presented by mergers wit state-owned IT entities

16.30 Apple, Google, IBM under the antitrust nanoscope

• Apple, IBM, Google cases and others
• Is there too much interventionism and shortsightedness in unilateral conduct enforcement?
• Are the antitrust authorities appropriately equipped to tackle unilateral conduct cases in the IT sector?
• Do IT sector cases move too slowly?
• Do the current policies of antitrust enforcement in the IT sector vis-a-vis the industry giants threaten benefits to consumers and innovation?

17.25 Summing up and close