Badmouthing Your Competitor’s Products: When Does Denigration Become an Antitrust Issue?

In this article, published in the American Bar Association’s publication Antitrust Source, authors Morten Nissen and Frederik Haugsted explore a new form of abusive conduct that has been identified and pursued by different competition authorities across Europe in the past decade, and examine the evolving case law in addressing claims that dominant firms can violate Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union through ‘denigration’ - disseminating negative information to customers about their competitors’ products.