Infraction by object : The General Court of the European Union confirms that the exchange of commercially sensitive information between competitors can constitute a restriction of competition by object (Infineon Technologies ; Philips)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. Can exchanges of sensitive commercial information between competitors, as such and without explicit concertation on prices or the allocation of customers or markets, constitute an infringement by object? That is one of the main questions, already addressed by the Court of Justice in several recent judgments (Wabco Europe of 16 September 2013 and Dole Food of 19 March 2015), which are answered in the two judgments delivered by the Court of First Instance on 15 December 2016, with a degree of severity which is doubtless explained by the circumstances of the case, the intensity of the exchanges of information and the nature of that information. On 3 September