Sears lost its bid to force suppliers of Dior and Givenchy cosmetics to keep supplying it when the Competition Tribunal denied it leave to bring an application under the Competition Act’s refusal to deal provisions in March 2007.

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THE LITIGATOR – Review of Competition Law – April 2007

Contributors: Michael Osborne , Jennifer Cantwell, Kyle Peterson , Sonny Ingram, Michael Binetti, and Adam Wygodny

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Appeal court revises test for abuse of dominant position
In identifying anti-competitive acts, one must ask whether the conduct had an intended predatory, exclusionary or disciplinary effect on a competitor, not on competition, the Federal Court of Appeal held in overturning the Tribunal’s 2005 finding that Canada Pipe’s rebate program was not anti-competitive….

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The open source movement has led to the development of many useful applications, including the popular browser Firefox and the operating system Linux. But is it against the law to give software away for free? In a recent case, a US court said that open source software does not violate US antitrust laws.

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Governments must refund money they collect through unconstitutional taxes, and cannot rely on the so-called “”passing-on”" defence to avoid repayment, the Supreme Court ruled in January 2007.The court’s rejection of the passing-on defence may have major implications in private litigation, particularly competition (antitrust) cases.

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