Thomas Höppner is a professor of law at Technical University Wildau and a Partner at Hausfeld in Berlin, specialising in EU and German competition law and intellectual property law. His research and practice cover the full range of contentious and non-contentious competition law matters, including related regulatory areas such as media, telecommunications or broadcasting. He has spearheaded complaints before the European Commission and taken competition claims before German courts, particularly in the context of an abuse of dominance and damage claims. Thomas has particular expertise in technology, media and network industries where he regularly advises clients in complex proceedings and litigations at the interface of competition law, sector-specific regulation, data protection and intellectual property law. Recent cases include representing several complainants in investigations relating to Amazon, Apple and Google at European and national levels, private enforcement of competition law claims to compulsory licenses as well as advising on regulatory reforms in the area of digital markets.
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On 30 December 2021, the German Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office, “FCO”) designated Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google, (“Google”) as an ‘undertaking of paramount significance for competition across markets’. The FCO is now considering whether to prohibit particular anti-competitive (...)
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With its judgment of 10th November 2021, Europe’s General Court did not just dismiss Google’s appeal against the European Commission’s Google Search (Shopping) decision, uphold the fine, tell gatekeepers “don’t be evil,” and remind everyone that Europe ensures equal opportunities. The Court also (...)
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The General Court has today dismissed Google’s appeal of the European Commission’s Google Shopping Decision from June 2017 and has upheld the EUR 2.42 billion fine imposed on Google – a record fine at the time. The General Court agreed with the European Commission’s finding (in its vast majority) (...)
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On 7 June 2021, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) concluded an investigation into Google’s ad tech business. The FCA (i) found that Google abused a pan-European dominant position and thereby infringed EU competition law by favoring its proprietary display advertising intermediation (...)
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On February 10th, 2021, the antitrust chamber of the German Regional Court of Munich granted two summary judgments in favor of the health portal NetDoktor, banning the preferential display within Google search results pages of boxes with information exclusively drawn from a state-run health (...)
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As previously reported in this Bulletin, on 6 February 2019, the German Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office – “FCO”) found that Facebook abused its dominance by improperly combining user data that it collected from various sources. As a remedy, the FCO imposed far-reaching restrictions on (...)
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On February 6th, the Bundeskartellamt (German Federal Cartel Office - “FCO”) ruled that Facebook abused its dominance by improperly combining user data that it collected. The FCO imposed far-reaching restrictions on Facebook’s processing of user data in the future, including a requirement that (...)
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In September 2018, the European Commission (“EC”) sent out formal requests for information (“RFIs”) to investigate allegations of an anticompetitive conduct by Amazon. The investigation relates to the interdependencies between Amazon’s third-party sales platform for retailers (“Amazon Marketplace”) (...)
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On 27 June 2017, the European Commission (the “Commission”) penalized Google for having abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its comparison shopping service, Google Shopping, over rival services. The Commission explained that it : "does not object to the design of (...)
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