A Spanish Commercial Court orders an undertaking to compensate a competitor for damages resulting from abuse of dominant position - without any previous final decision from the NCA - concerning access to telecommunications databases (Conduit/Telefónica)

Telefónica de España, S.A.U (“Telefónica3”) has been ordered by the Madrid Commercial Court Number 5 to pay € 639 003 to a competitor due to the losses arising from the abuse of dominant position of Telefónica in the Spanish telecommunications market. In April 2003, effective liberalization took place in the Spanish market for the provision of telephone services, which was until then operated exclusively by Telefónica. Due to such liberalization, Telefónica was obliged to provide service operators with the client databases that it had obtained as a consequence of its exclusive position in the market. In this context, Conduit Europe, S.A. (“Conduit”), a British operator