The Italian Competition Authority imposes FRAND licensing to a local newspaper in a paradigm for the essential facility doctrine applied to copyrights (Società Iniziative Editoriali)

On 20 December 2017, the Italian Competition Authority (or “ICA”) issued a rare infringement decision in an abuse of dominance investigation against the publisher of a local daily newspaper (“SIE”), which refused to deal with a player (the “complainant” or “Euregio”) in the downstream local market for daily media intelligence services. SIE publishes L’Adige, a daily newspaper distributed almost entirely in the Province of Trento and Bolzano (or “PTB”), in the North-eastern Italian region of Alto Adige. PTB distinguishes from other provinces of Alto Adige for that its inhabitants speak primary Italian, whilst the remainders mostly speak German. The investigation has found that L’Adige is dominant in the PTB because it makes 65% of the overall sales of daily newspaper in the area; and