The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, is asking for comments about how to overcome obstacles to a modern, integrated card payments system across Europe. 

The European Commission is requesting these comments on its “green paper” assessing the current payment landscape in Europe.  This initiative covers all payments – including e-commerce and mobile payments – made with a credit or debit card across the 27-nation European market.

The green paper takes aim at a current market situation fragmented along national borders with a small number of domestic networks and only two major international players – Visa and MasterCard.  According to the green paper, the Single Euro Payment Area or SEPA, which will replace 32 separate payment regimes with a single one to facilitate faster and cheaper cross-border payments, may further entrench this duopoly.  This is because few domestic schemes are accepted outside of their home countries, and many are shutting down.

“Carrying a virtual train ticket or repaying a friend with your mobile phone, buying your groceries online, paying with your debit card abroad — the way European citizens shop and pay is radically changing,” the European Commission’s announcement of the consultation explains. “A secure and transparent integrated payments environment throughout the EU could create more efficient, modern and safer means of payments — for the benefits of consumers, merchants and payment providers.”

The main issues identified in the paper are:

    * Market access and entry for existing and new service providers

    * Payment security and data protection

    * Transparent and efficient pricing of payment services

    * Technical standardization

    * Inter-operability between service providers

The green paper is available from the EU website and comments may be submitted until April 11, 2012.  The Commission is expected to announce further action before the summer of 2012.

While many international businesses are used to navigating through the tricky shoals of United States antitrust enforcement and intellectual property (“IP”) law, they are now finding they need to navigate through South Korean regulation as well.

As South Korean firms have become increasingly prominent players in the global technology marketplace, the Korean government has become an increasingly prominent player in the regulation of global technology firms.

Since the mid-2000s, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has investigated, and often sanctioned, global tech firms such as Microsoft, Intel and Qualcomm.  It recently turned its sights to Google.

In 2010, the KFTC significantly revised its guidelines for enforcing Korea’s competition laws with respect to IP licensing.  Those guidelines apply equally to non-Korean firms whose conduct affects Korean markets. 

The US also employs antitrust guidelines for IP licensing, issued in 1995.  How do the new Korean guidelines compare to their US counterparts?

Constantine Cannon recently published an article addressing that question and identifying some similarities and differences.  Click here to read the analysis.

The United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is calling in reinforcements to expand Great Britain’s investigation into whether competition is being blocked in the markets for concrete and its main ingredients, aggregate and cement.

The OFT has referred Great Britain’s aggregates, cement, and ready-mix concrete markets to the U.K.’s Competition Commission, an independent body that conducts in-depth investigations into mergers and markets.

The OFT, which has been investigating these markets since 2010, announced that it has concerns that the markets “are not working well.”  In particular, the OFT notes that  five major players account for upwards of 90% of the cement market, 75% of aggregates sales, and around 70% of ready-mix production.

The big five firms are London-based Anglo American Plc, Germany’s Heidelberg Cement AG, Switzerland’s Holcim Ltd., Paris- based Lafarge SA, and Mexico’s Cemex SAB.

The OFT also believes that there are high barriers to entry, vertical integration, and multiple contacts and information exchanges across the markets.

If the Competition Commission concludes that any feature or combination of features in these markets prevents, restricts or distorts competition, the Commission must seek to remedy the problems that it identifies either by introducing remedies itself or by recommending action by other British agencies.

Thomson Reuters, the worldwide provider of business and financial information, has offered to settle an EU antitrust probe.  The two-year old investigation is focused on the company’s system of requiring customers to use Reuters Instrument Codes (RICs) to access financial data.  The codes are used to identify financial instruments and indices for which a consumer wants to retrieve data.

The European Commission began the investigation in November 2009.  The ongoing proceedings are aimed at examining a possible abuse of Thomson Reuters’ dominant position.  The Commission noted that the use of RICs makes it difficult for consumers to cross-reference data with other providers.  Further, RICs could lock in customers due to the length of time and high costs involved with reconfiguring software applications to replace RICs with a competitor’s product.  If a violation is found, the Commission is able to fine Thomson Reuters up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover.

The settlement offered by Thomson Reuters would allow customers to license additional user rights for a monthly fee.  These licenses would permit customers to use RICs with the codes used by other data suppliers, increasing the number of providers a customer could access.  Thomson Reuters stated it would supply all the information needed for customers to link RICs with those used by rival data suppliers.

The proposed settlement has not yet been accepted.  Competitors, customers, and other third parties will have until January 25, 2012 to comment on the proposal.  The Commission will then determine if it will make the offer binding and terminate the investigation.

Right now, the smartphone patent wars are raging across the globe.

For example, Apple recently prevailed in a skirmish before the International Trade Commission that could theoretically stop the importation into the United States of all smartphones based on Google’s Android mobile operating system.  In Germany, Motorola Mobility, which Google is in the process of acquiring, won a victory against Apple for patent infringement that could lead to the iPhone and iPad being pulled from store shelves in that country.

Could patent pools, a 100-year-old legal device, provide a possible solution? Constantine Cannon recently published an article about the smartphone patent pools in Law360 and whether they would be a good way to foster innovation and protect intellectual property.  Click here to read the article.