This book investigates the regime of consumer benchmarks in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and explores to what extent this regime meets each of the goals of the Directive. In particular, it assesses whether the consumer benchmarks are suitable in terms of achieving the three goals of the Directive: achieving a high level of consumer protection, increasing the smooth functioning of the internal market, and improving competition in the market as such. In addition to providing a thorough analysis of the consumer benchmarks and their relationship to the goals of the Directive, at a more practical level, the book provides insight into the working and consequences of the benchmarks that can be used in the evaluation of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and its application by the CJEU. This assessment is important because the Directive, while promising to regulate unfair commercial practices in a way that achieves the Directive’s goals, has removed the possibility for Member States to regulate unfair commercial practices themselves.

Mobile technology offers an innovative and cost-effective channel for delivering a range of financial services, including mobile payments. In some jurisdictions, mobile payments simply provide a convenient option for facilitating payment transactions. In other jurisdictions, mobile payments are viewed as potentially transformative because they present an opportunity to expand access to financial services. However, as with other innovations, mobile payments raise consumer protection concerns and require robust regulatory mechanisms to address such concerns. Against this backdrop, the book adopts a typology of consumer policy tools which can be used to address the identified consumer concerns. This typology guides the enquiry into the existing consumer protection frameworks applying to mobile payments in selected jurisdictions (Canada, Kenya, and the United Kingdom). The main objective of this endeavour is to identify best practices that national authorities seeking to leverage mobile payments and similar innovations can emulate. This book will be of interest to policymakers, regulators, industry stakeholders, students, and scholars interested in the regulation of innovative financial services, particularly from a consumer protection perspective.

This book contends that, with regard to the likelihood of confusion standard, European trademark law applies the average consumer incoherently and inconsistently. To test this proposal, it presents an analysis of the horizontal and vertical level of harmonization of the average consumer. The horizontal part focuses on similar fictions in areas of law adjacent to European trademark law (and in economics), and the average consumer in unfair competition law. The vertical part focuses on European trademark law, represented mainly by EU trademark law, and the trademark laws of the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The book provides readers with a better understanding of key aspects of European trademark law (the average consumer applied as part of the likelihood of confusion standard) and combines relevant law and practices with theoretical content and other related areas of law (and economics). Accordingly, it is an asset for policymakers and practitioners, as well as general readers with an interest in intellectual property law and theory.

This timely book presents a detailed analysis of the role of law and regulation in the utilisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the media sector. As well as contributing to the wider discussion on law and AI, the book also digs deeper by exploring pressing issues at the intersections of AI, media, and the law. Chapters critically re-examine various rights and responsibilities from the perspectives of incentives for accountable utilisation of AI in the industry.

L’impatto del diritto dell’Unione europea sugli Stati membri si concretizza, in misura determinante, tramite regole e principi dettati dalla Corte di giustizia e destinati a essere applicati dai giudici nazionali. Il buon funzionamento del complesso sistema derivante dall’interazione tra l’ordinamento dell’Unione e i singoli Stati membri presuppone, pertanto, un rapporto costruttivo tra la Corte di giustizia e le corti nazionali. Muovendo da tale premessa, il volume affronta le problematiche inerenti al ‘dialogo’ tra tutte le corti nazionali (di merito, supreme, costituzionali) e la Corte di giustizia. A tal fine sono stati chiamati a esprimersi, prima di tutto, gli stessi giudici che ne sono protagonisti: a questi ultimi è stato chiesto di illustrare, a partire dalla propria esperienza, le difficoltà di comunicazione, in senso ampio, riscontrate nel dialogo con la Corte di giustizia. Alla voce dei giudici si aggiunge, quindi, quella dei professori specializzati nel diritto comparato ed europeo.

This book consists of contributions exploring from different perspectives the 'images' of the consumer in EU law. The images of the consumer form the foundation for various EU policies, more or less directly oriented towards the goal of consumer protection. The purpose of the volume is to establish what visions of the consumer there are in different contexts of EU law, whether they are consistent, and whether EU law's engagement with consumer-related considerations is sincere or merely instrumental to the achievement of other goals. The chapters discuss how consumers should be protected in EU contract, competition, free movement and trade mark law. They reflect on the limits of the consumer empowerment rationale as the basis for EU consumer policy. The chapters look also at the variety of concerns consumers might have, including the cost of goods and services, access to credit, ethical questions of consumption, the challenges of excessive choice and the possibility to influence the content of regulatory measures, and explore the significance of these issues for the EU's legislative and judicial process.