IE Law Professor´s Francisco Marcos articles among 100 best academic articles of Antitrust Law

The aim of the Antitrust Writing Awards is to promote competition scholarship and to contribute to competition advocacy. The 2019 Antitrust Writing Awards Jury contributes to this achievement by selecting the best writings published in 2018.

A Board and two Steering Committees, composed of leading enforcers, academics and counsels, participate impartially in this selection and seek to reward the most meaningful antitrust publications of 2018. In order to ensure impartiality, members of the Board cannot vote for their own articles, and the Steering Committees and Editorial Committee are not eligible to compete. The 2019 edition of the Awards Gala Dinner will take place on March 26, 2019 in Washington DC.

Professor´s Marcos articles

INNOVATION BY DOMINANT FIRMS IN THE MARKET: DAMNED IF YOU DON’T … BUT DAMNED IF YOU DO?

Innovation is key for dynamic efficiency and one of the best recipes to increase long-term businesses’ profits and, at the same time, enhance consumer welfare. Modern high-technology markets offer a perfect account of the importance of innovation for business success: either firms keep apace innovating, or rivals will overcome them and they will be left aside by consumers. History shows many examples of firms that have failed to sustain the innovation game and have faded away. At the same time it also demonstrates how many successful businesses have gained a powerful position in the market in a very short period of time by offering good innovative products or services to consumers at competitive prices. Nevertheless, by being successful, firms sometimes have attained a dominant position in the market and that may have meaningful implications from the perspective of antitrust or competition law. In that situation, the experience in many countries shows that innovation decisions by dominant market players can be second-guessed by competition authorities in search for anticompetitive behavior. This paper will assess the limits and dangers competition law enforcers face in their investigations and sanctioning antitrust proceedings in the assessment of anticompetitive unilateral conduct by innovating firms.

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A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EU ANTITRUST DAMAGES DIRECTIVE IN SIXTEEN MEMBER STATES

This paper looks at the implementation of the Directive UE 2014/104 in sixteen Member States (MS): Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. It analyses the context in which the implementation took place and the process that lead to the adoption of measures in national law to transpose the Directive. It looks and compares the substantive and temporal scope of the national provisions in those MS. Finally, the solutions followed by each of those MS in addressing the several issues raised by the Directive (liability and compensation, joint liability, statute of limitations, quantification of harm, passing-on defence and indirect purchasers claims, access to evidence, specialized courts and collective redress).

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Professor Marcos is an expert in economic analysis of law and commercial law, and has enjoyed an intensive career in research and teaching in prestigious universities such as Harvard, Georgetown, California (Berkeley) and Bologna. In October 2006 he was appointed General Director of Competition Policy at the Regional Antitrust Authority, stepping down from that position on September 2009. Professor Marcos teaches law at IE Law School, having studied as a Fulbright scholar (1994-1995) and having enjoyed a scholarship for the Real Colegio de San Clemente de los Españoles (1997-1998). His latest research hinges on the field of competition law, corporate law and securities regulation.  “In my PhD thesis I analysed contractual tools used by foreign firms entering the US stock market, researching the transnational problems that exist in the different stock exchanges, which has hardly been studied at all from a legal perspective”. He received the Avvocato Mario Jacchia Award from Bologna University for the best doctoral thesis in commercial law. His thesis has been published by Thomson-Civitas in 2008 with the title Los “Depositary receipts”. La negociación cruzada de valores en los mercados extranjeros. He is member of the Editorial Board of the European Business Organization Law Review (TMC Asser Press) and of European Company Law (Kluwer Law International), and has worked with internationally renowned experts like Stefan Riesenfeld, professor at Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley), Angel Rojo, chair holder at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; and Renzo Costi, chair holder at Bologna University. Professor Marcos holds a law degree from Universidad de Oviedo, a master of laws form the University of California in Berkeley, and a doctorate from the Real Colegio de España in Bologna. He worked as a lawyer in LANDWELL, an currently he does as a consultant in ECONLAW STRATEGIC CONSULTING, advising governments, companies and firms on different matters in the area of market regulation and antitrust law