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Europe steps up its fight against fraud
European watchdogs have long been focusing on enforcement against corporate crime with a great focus on anti-corruption, economic sanctions and money laundering.
Germany | Publication | February 2021
On February 10, 2021, in two landmark antitrust decisions, a Munich Regional Court, temporarily blocked a cooperative arrangement regarding internet search results between the German Federal Ministry of Health (Bundesministerium für Gesundheit, BMG) and Google on antitrust grounds.
The arrangement between Google and the BMG provided for preferential positioning of a national health information portal run by the BMG (https://gesund.bund.de/) on Google’s German search website. When users of Google in Germany searched for information on health conditions, they were shown a prominently displayed information box (a so-called knowledge panel) containing information originating from the national health portal as well as a link to the portal.
The Court found that positioning the knowledge panel with the link to BMG’s health information portal above the websites of competing health portals disadvantaged private-sector health information providers such as the plaintiff in this case, NetDoktor.de (NetDoktor), a subsidiary of the Hubert Burda Media Group. Competition was therefore foreclosed.
Interesting takeaways from the Court’s decision are:
The full text of the rulings (which are not final – they are interim measures proceedings) is not available yet, but the press release issued by the Regional Court in Munich can be found here. Google and the German Government can appeal the interim rulings to the Higher Regional Court in Munich, and it will be interesting to watch any developments in this regard. The case reference numbers are 37 O 15721/20 and 37 O 17520/20.
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European watchdogs have long been focusing on enforcement against corporate crime with a great focus on anti-corruption, economic sanctions and money laundering.
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Head of Legal Operations, Stephanie Hamon, will be joining the panel discussion on "Simplifying Legal Tech Adoption and Implementation" at the Legal Tech Talk conference on June 13th (3:30 - 4:15 PM).
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