Written by a worldwide team of experts, this book surveys and comments on the unfair competition laws of the world's leading economic powers. Following a standard pattern, each chapter introduces the reader to the latest developments in each jurisdiction, highlighting the ways in which the basic legislation and case law relates to enforcement issues, and how unfair competition laws fit with wider considerations of consumer protection and within prevailing intellectual property and competition law frameworks. Each of the country reports follows the same standard structure, which includes: background and general approach to unfair competition law * legal basis of unfair competition law and relations to neighboring areas of law * general considerations * general clause against unfair competition * marketing * protection of competitors against unfair trade practices * specific protection of consumers against unfair trade practices * enforcement. The country reports cover the following countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, and the US.

The book delineates, with extraordinary clarity and precision, the working of unfair competition law throughout the European Union. Its four comprehensive chapters encompass: basic considerations of definition, subject matter, enforcement, and applicable law: international provisions under the Paris convention, TRIPS, and WIPO model law; analysis of relevant EC directives and regulations and ECJ jurisprudence; and extensive discussions of the national unfair competition laws of all 25 Member States. For each Member State, specific topics covered include such considerations as the following: sources of law; competition law in a nutshell; regulation of advertising; direct marketing; sales promotion; risk of confusion; disparagement, defamation; misappropriation, imitation; impediment of competitors; and breach of the law. The author also provides a selected bibliography of sources for each country. It would be difficult to find a more useful analysis of European Unfair Competition Law than this systematic study. It is practical, thorough, clarifying, and readable, all at the same time. The author untangles the most complex of apparent contradictions with impressive skill. Copies of this book will quickly take their places on the working shelves of interested practitioners, academics, and officials throughout Europe.

ÔThis comprehensive Handbook demonstrates that academic thinking, new and old, has a role to play in shaping modern competition policy.Õ Ð Gunnar Niels, Oxera This indispensable Handbook examines the interface of competition policy, competition law and industrial economics. The book aims to further our understanding of how economic reasoning and legal expertise complement each other in defining the fundamental issues and principles in competition policy. In specially commissioned chapters the book provides a scholarly review of economic theory, empirical evidence and standards of legal evaluation with respect to monopolization of markets, exploitation of market power and mergers, among other issues. The International Handbook of Competition Ð Second Edition will be accessible to a wide audience including students of economics and law, public administrators, lawyers, consultants, and business executives.

With the international community on the brink of an explosion of private remedies for violation of national competition laws, this timely Handbook provides state-of the-art analysis of the private enforcement of competition laws across the globe. Private enforcement of antitrust is becoming a significant component of competition policy laws worldwide; today, more than a hundred jurisdictions have adopted market regimes operating within a framework of competition law, providing a varied base for developing ways by which persons injured by anticompetitive conduct will (or will not) be able to obtain remedies. Written primarily from the perspective of the complainant, the Handbook contributes to the discussion by presenting empirical research on private remedies through unprecedented, detailed and systematic analysis of private antitrust enforcement in the US. The expert contributors - law practitioners in the US and 21 other countries - explain both the law and the realities regarding private remedies as they have experienced them. They provide useful information to law and policy makers contemplating the introduction or expansion of private enforcement and to competition advocacy NGOs, attorneys and others who may wish to support or utilize the tools of private enforcement. By way of conclusion, valuable observations are imparted and recommendations prescribed. This important Handbook will prove an invaluable reference tool for a wide-ranging audience including: international private practice lawyers, law academics and students with a special interest in competition policy, international government officials involved in legislation or regulation of private remedies in countries with competition laws, and economists consulting in competition cases.

This book first addresses substantive issues, beginning with the changing role of business torts in antitrust litigation and continuing with the extent to which antitrust concepts have been invoked in business tort litigation (focusing on the competitive privilege and the Noerr-Pennington defense). The next chapter surveys the field of unfair competition, followed by an examination of the business torts of commercial disparagement and defamation. Subsequent chapters address interference torts, the common law and statutory torts of fraud and negligent misrepresentation, the field of misappropriation of trade secrets, and recent developments in the area of punitive damages.

The many strands of trademark and unfair competition doctrine are organized into a coherent conceptual framework consisting of a brief examination of foundational concepts, followed by thorough treatments of the law on (1) the creation of trademark rights; and (2) the scope & enforcement of trademark rights and some related causes of action. The traditional case-and-note format is enhanced by problems that help students understand intricate key topics. Trademarks and Unfair Competition features many issues related to online commerce, such as cybersquatting, keyword advertising, the relationship between trademarks and domain names, and the potential secondary liability of online auction websites such as eBay. International as well as domestic issues are thoroughly explored. Comprehensive coverage of trade dress protection is integrated with issues of word mark protection. New to the 5th Edition: the Tam and Brunetti decisions striking down the scandalousness and disparagement bars to registration extensive coverage of recent case developments on expressive uses of marks in political and artistic contexts the Belmora decision on well-known marks and developments on extraterritorial application of the Lanham Act Key Features: coherent conceptual framework clearly delineating creation of rights and enforcement of rights issues traditional case-and-note format, enhanced by problems thorough coverage of trademark issues arising in online commerce integrated coverage of international and domestic doctrine thorough treatment of trade dress protection, integrated with issues of word mark protection

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Law, grade: 1, University of Linz, course: Bachelorseminar, language: English, abstract: According to Black's Law dictionary, competition is the struggle for commercial advantage. The efforts taken of companies to achieve the respective commercial advantages can be - especially in a free market economy - ample. Let's illustrate this fact by the following examples: Suppose that a automobile manufacturer, incensed by a car magazine's constant ridicule of its cars, launches a rival magazine with a similar name and layout, copies the other paper's stories, lures away the employees, advertisers and subscribers of the other magazine by offering them higher wages and lower advertising and subscribing rates and finally succeeds in running its critical opponent out of business. Has the automobile manufacturer engaged in any unfair trade practices for which the owners of the car magazine may seek legal remedy? Or has the manufacturer acted in a permissible way to the magazine's attack? Furthermore, could the magazine be said to have engaged in an unfair trade practice by permanently ridiculing the cars and its manufacturer2? How can a merger between two or more businesses which are on the same market level and which manufacture similar products in the same geographic region influence consumers? What if two competitors agree in the artificial setting of prices at a certain level, contrary to the workings of the free market? Do consumers have legal remedies against companies who engage in false advertising or who distribute faulty and dangerous goods? The body of law which deals with these subjects is known as competition law, which can broadly be divided into Consumer Protection Law and unfair trade practices on the one hand and antitrust-law on the other hand. The bachelor thesis at hand takes the reader to a journey through competition law with a special insight into Unfair Trade Practices. After the stud