Search
Meredith Pickford QC and David Gregory were in the General Court of the European Union on 12 to 14 February, as part of a team representing Google in an appeal against a decision of the European Commission. The Commission had found that Google abused a dominant position in the way that it presented results for shopping searches, for which Google was fined 2.4 billion euros. Meredith Pickford QC led on the legal issues for Google. He explained to the Court that the European Commission’s decision strayed from clear and established tests for what constitutes an abuse of dominance in European Law; and that, moreover, Google competed on the merits with innovations that benefited consumers. The case is a highly important one with significant ramifications for Article 102 TFEU and similar domestic competition rules on the test for abuse of dominance.