Noerr Competition Day 2018: Antitrust law challenges – digitalisation and internationalisation

More than 130 experts from Germany and abroad discussed the challenges of digitalisation and internationalisation at the seventh Noerr Competition Day. Items on the agenda also included best practices for internal investigations, challenges when introducing antitrust law compliance programmes in Central and Eastern Europe and R&D among competitors.

Asked about the future of antitrust law compliance in the digital age, Philipp Berger, CTO neXenio argued that it was necessary for businesses to take antitrust law requirements into account when programming their algorithms, i.e. to create what is known as “compliance by design”. As tempting as this may sound, where companies rely on algorithms this does not change anything about their antitrust law accountability. Sandro Gleave from the Federal Cartel Office in Bonn commented that the “old world” antitrust law tools generally also work in the digital world.

Participants agreed that digitalisation is confronting authorities, companies, the legal profession and competition economists with new but also exciting challenges. Alexander Birnstiel, head of the practice group Antitrust & Competition at the international law firm Noerr, therefore in particular drew the conclusion that all market participants will have to learn to bring the digitalisation of business models, which is subject to increasingly rapid change, in line with an antitrust law assessment which is just as quick and reliable.

Digitalisation impressively underlines the “creative destruction” of the competition process. In light of this, close liaison between businesses, law firms and antitrust authorities is more important than ever in order to be able to react quickly, effectively and in compliance with legal requirements to the constant dynamic innovation process. The Noerr Competition Day is committed to this cause.

That these issues and antitrust law practices are becoming increasingly international was also shown by this year’s speakers: besides Elizabeth Prewitt, Hughes Hubbard and Reed LLP New York, and Youngjin Jung, Kim & Chang, Seoul, as well as Zsuzsa Cserhalmi, Digital Single Market Task Force, European Commission, Brussels, speakers included Natalie Harsdorf, Federal Competition Authority, Vienna, and Urs Müller, Zimmer Biomet, Winterthur.