Katharina Bongs focuses on EU and German competition law and EU trade law. Katharina advises and represents clients in German and EU cartel and merger control cases. Her experience includes preparing leniency applications as well as assisting in cartel defence and settlement proceedings. She also advises clients on how to structure their agreements to ensure competition law compliance and organises customised EU and German competition law compliance programmes. In the field of trade law, Katharina specialises in EU customs law. Her expertise extends to advising clients on multi-jurisdictional customs matters and representing them before national customs administrations, courts and the European Commission. Katharina is also part of the regulatory team and routinely deals with legal questions involving chemicals and energy. Prior to joining Van Bael & Bellis, Katharina qualified as a German lawyer. In the course of her two years of legal training, she worked, notably, at the Cologne office of a large German commercial law firm dealing with distribution and EU law, with the German Federal Ministry of Economics dealing with anti-dumping measures and with the German Embassy in Oslo.
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On 18 and 25 January 2022, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) issued two press releases concerning cooperation agreements in the food industry, which provide insight into when the pursuit of sustainability objectives may be sufficient to exempt such agreements from the cartel prohibition (...)
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According to a press release of 5 January 2022, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) has decided that Alphabet Inc., including its subsidiary Google (“Google”), is of paramount significance for competition across markets pursuant to Section 19a of the German Act against Restraints of (...)
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On 6 July 2021, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) upheld an injunction against Porsche and its German distributor (“Porsche” or the ”Defendants”) in favor of an industry association whose members manufacture and distribute customized parts for tuning purposes (the “Association”). The (...)
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On 24 June 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“ECJ”) ordered the removal of a request for a preliminary ruling lodged by the Regional Court of Düsseldorf on 23 March 2021 in Case C-182/21, Nokia Technologies Oy v. Daimler AG. The questions arose in a dispute between Nokia and (...)
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On 20 January 2021, the Regional Court of Munich I (the “Court”) issued two preliminary injunctions against Google Ireland Ltd. (“Google”) and the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the German Federal Ministry of Health (“the Ministry”), at the request of health platform NetDoktor.de (...)
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On 19 January 2021, the 10th Amendment of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (“ARC”) entered into force. The 10th Amendment, also referred to as the “Digitalisation Act”, introduces significant changes to German Competition Law. A previous issue of this newsletter (VBB on Competition (...)
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On 14 January 2021, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) announced that it had fined two manufacturers of manhole covers approximately € 6 million for price-fixing and coordinating their respective offers for two large contracts. The companies manufacture products such as manhole covers and (...)
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On 23 December 2020, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) announced that it had fined five aluminium forging companies and ten responsible individuals a total amount of approximately € 175 million for price fixing between April 2006 and April 2018. Automotive and motorcycle manufacturers and (...)
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On 2 December 2020, the Regional Court of Bonn (“Court”) dismissed a claim of € 72.8 million by crop protection producer BayWa against the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”). BayWa argued that the FCO had violated its procedural rights, in particular the principle of equal treatment, in the (...)
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On 26 November 2020, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf (“Düsseldorf Court”) decided to request a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“ECJ”) in patent infringement proceedings involving Nokia and Daimler. The questions give the ECJ the opportunity to offer guidance on (...)
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On 15 October 2020, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) issued a judgment on the burden of proof for showing the exhaustion of trademark rights in a case pitting Coty against Amazon. After having made a test purchase from Amazon of two bottles of a perfume bearing the “JOOP!” trademark on (...)
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In a recently published judgment of 23 September 2020, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) ruled once again on the private damages claims of a public transport company following on from the Federal Cartel Office’s rail track cartel decision (see VBB on Competition Law, Volume 2012, No. 7 (...)
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On 10 September 2020, the Regional Court of Munich (“Munich Court”) ruled in favour of Sharp that Daimler had infringed a standard essential patent (“SEP”) of Sharp. Sharp is the patent holder of EP 2667676B1 which is standard essential for the Long-Term Evolution (“LTE”) telecommunications (...)
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On 9 September 2020, the German Government tabled the draft 10th amendment of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (“ARC”), also referred to as the ARC Digitalisation Act. The draft amendment entails significant changes in the areas of abuse of dominance, merger control, cartel fines (...)
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On 27 August 2020, the Austrian Federal Competition Authority (“FCA”) announced its conditional approval of the acquisition of 63% of the shares and sole control of the brewery company Fohrenburg Beteiligungs-Aktienge- sellschaft (“Fohrenburg”) by Austria’s largest brewery, Brau Union (...)
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According to a press release of the Mannheim Regional Court of 18 August 2020 in the matter Nokia v Daimler, the Regional Court of Mannheim (the “Court”) ruled in favour of Nokia that Daimler had infringed Nokia’s patent and could not invoke a FRAND objection. The Court held that Daimler and a (...)
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On 13 July 2020, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) overturned an earlier judgment of the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf to terminate proceedings against the brewery Carlsberg and Carlsberg’s managing director for their role in the Beer cartel case. In 2014, the Federal Cartel Office (...)
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On 23 June 2020, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”), in summary proceedings, preliminarily confirmed the finding of the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) that Facebook had abused its dominant position. It overturned the decision of the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf that had suspended the (...)
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In its judgment of 5 May 2020, the Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) overturned the appeal ruling of the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (the “Düsseldorf Court”) and found that Haier’s mobile telephones and tablets infringed Sisvel’s standard-essential patent (“SEP”) and that Sisvel had not abused (...)
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On 7 May 2008, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf quashed a decision of the German Federal Cartel Office prohibiting the merger between the university hospital of Greifswald and the regional hospital of Wolgast. The Düsseldorf Court applied the recent case law of the German Federal Court of (...)
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On 17 April 2008, the German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology approved the merger between the university hospital Greifswald and the regional hospital Wolgast, thereby overruling the German Federal Cartel Office’s (FCO) prohibition of the transaction in December 2006. Under German (...)
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