Evgeny Khokhlov took part in Forbes Legal Forum 2024

04.10.2024

At the conference held on 19 September, the improvement of the antimonopoly legislation was discussed during the session “No limit to perfection, or whether there should be the Sixth antimonopoly package”.

The Sixth antimonopoly package involves the abolition of the so-called “antimonopoly immunities” for intellectual property, as well as the introduction of special rules for determining a dominant position for non-transactional digital platforms.

The abolition of antimonopoly immunities has a long history and causes heated discussions. Evgeny expressed a compromise point of view that there should be no a priori immunity for intellectual property, but it should, at the same time, be necessary to find a balance between the interests of IP right holders and their consumers and competitors. He noted that the existing legislation makes it possible to effectively apply antitrust prohibitions, as evidenced by numerous cases, while access to intellectual property rights could be granted within the framework of the provision of compulsory licences as regulated by civil law.

The panelists also discussed the specifics of the antimonopoly regulation of non-transactional platforms, in particular, the approach to calculating their market shares. Evgeny proposed in this part to supplement the Market Definition Procedure by the specifics of analysing the services of non-transactional platforms.