FTC’s Antitrust Ruling on Intel Goes to the Court

Yesterday it was reported that Intel Corp. had filed a lawsuit to the Seoul High Court against a 26 billion won ($18.7 million) fine handed down by Fair Trade Commission(FTC).

Previously the FTC fined Intel in June for abuse of its market dominating position after a three-year investigation.   According to the agency, Intel had been offering rebates to major local personal computer makers, including Samsung Electronics, on condition that they not buy central processing units from Intel’s rival, U.S.-based Advanced Micro Devices.

Under Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act(MRFT) of Korea, “No market-dominating enterpriser shall commit acts such as unreasonably interfering with the business activities of other enterprisers or unreasonably impeding the participation of new competitors”.  Intel is currently being regarded as a market-domination enterpriser under MRFT.

Intel stated in its complaint that FTC  had made errors both in fact finding and legal reasoning and the Court would confirm there had been no violation of law in Intel’s business in Korea.

© 2008 Wonil Chung, a Korean Anti-trust Lawyer/Chung & Partners, a Korean Anti-trust Law Firm.  All rights reserved. Some copyrights, photos, icons, trademarks, trade dress, or other commercial symbols that appear on this post are the property of the respective owners.

FTC Investigates 3 National Broadcasters’ Abusing Market Dominating Position in TV Drama Copyright dispute

It is reported that the Fair Trade Commission, the Korean Antitrust watchdog, has began a investigation whether 3 national broadcasters, KBS, MBC, SBS, violated Fair Trade Law.  Before this investigation, TV drama producers had publicly claimed that 3 broadcasters abused their market dominating positions and forced them to assign all the intellectual properties regarding the produced drama to the broadcasters.  The producers also alleged that the broadcasters have fixed consignment sale fees.  Here is a related news article.

For those who want to know more about what constitutes abuse of market dominating position under Korean anti-trust law, please refer to my previous post here.

© 2008 Wonil Chung, a Korean Broadcasting Lawyer/Chung & Partners, a Korean Broadcasting Law Firm.  All rights reserved. Some copyrights, photos, icons, trademarks, trade dress, or other commercial symbols that appear on this post are the property of the respective owners.

FTC to Take on Global Cartels

It was reported yesterday that The Fair Trade Commission of South Korea(FTC) has opened a new division to investigate and monitor international cartels. The new division will be responsible for monitoring foreign companies for possible fair trade law violations as well as those carried out by foreign business associations. There have been increasing number of cross-border cartels suspected of violation on fair trade laws. However,until now, the FTC has been unable to crack down international cartel cases due to personnel shortages. The new division is expected to cope with that kind of challenges efficiently. Here is the original news article.

© 2008 Wonil Chung, a Korean Antitrust Lawyer/Chung & Partners, a Korean Antitrust Law Firm.  All rights reserved. Some copyrights, photos, icons, trademarks, trade dress, or other commercial symbols that appear on this post are the property of the respective owners.

Anti-Cartel Enforcement under Korean Laws

This is an ICN(International Competition Network) Anti-Cartel Enforcement Template published on 2007. 5. 9. This template introduces very useful information regarding Korean legislation and related topics on cartels such as:

Information on the Law Relating to Cartels
Scope and Nature of Prohibition on Cartels
Investigation Institutions
Decision-making Institutions
Handling Complaints and Initiation of Proceedings
Leniency Policy
Investigative Powers of the Enforcing Institutions
Procedural Rights of Business and individuals
Limitation periods and deadlines
Types of Decisions
Sanction for Procedural Breaches (Non-compliance with Procedural Obligations)
Sanctions on the Merits of the Case
Possibilities if Appeal

© 2008 Wonil Chung, a Korean Antitrust Lawyer/Chung & Partners, a Korean Antitrust Law Firm.  All rights reserved. Some copyrights, photos, icons, trademarks, trade dress, or other commercial symbols that appear on this post are the property of the respective owners.

SK-Hanaro Deal Gets Conditional OK

On February 15, the Fair Trade Commission approved a merger of the country’s top cell phone provider with the No. 2 broadband Internet provider, with a few conditions. You can read full news article here.

© 2008 Wonil Chung, a Korean Corporate Lawyer/Chung & Partners, a Korean Corporate Law Firm.  All rights reserved. Some copyrights, photos, icons, trademarks, trade dress, or other commercial symbols that appear on this post are the property of the respective owners.

Korean Supreme Court’s Ground-Breaking Decision Regarding “Unfairness” in the Abuse of Market Dominating Position in POSCO Case

The Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act of Korea(herein after the “Act”) prohibits certain types of act as a market dominating enterpriser’s act of abusing its status(for example, a transaction refusal act). However the Act requires the existence of “unfairness” in market dominating enterpriser’s act. So there has been a dispute with regard to how to determine the existence of “unfairness”.

This case is the first Supreme Court’s decision on that key issue in anti-trust law where POSCO refused to supply hot rolled steel coils to a local company. The Supreme Court held that “unfairness should be acknowledged only where a transaction refusal act can be deemed as perpetrated with intent or objective of maintaining or reinforcing monopolistic status at the market, i.e., influencing a market order artificially by restricting a free competition at the market, and with the evaluation that the refusal act is likely to have anti-competition effects from the objective point of view”.

Also the court held that “the party alleging a market dominating enterpriser’s act of abusing its status must prove that the transaction refusal has the intent and objective as an act likely to cause effects of suppressing a competition such as price increase of the goods, decrease in output, harming the innovation, decrease in the number of capable competitors, decrease in diversity, etc. If the above effects are proven to appear actually, it can be inferred that the act was likely to cause suppression upon competition, and there was intent or purpose as to this.”

The court further held that “If the above effects are not proven, it should be determined whether the act of refusal has the intent or purpose as an act likely to suppress the competition effectively by considering various factors as a whole