The role and activities of the European Court of Justice (EJC) have been discussed for couple of decades now. Without any doubt the role that ECJ fulfils today in the European Community is not what it was in the beginning of its existence and perhaps not even what was strictly prescribed by the EC Treaty. In the present thesis will be firstly examined, how the present role of the ECJ, as a quasi-c

The failing firm defence is well-established under the US Horizontal Merger Guidelines and judicatory of the US Supreme Court. This defence is applicable to the mergers that create or strengthen the dominant position of the firms on the market and therefore do not violate the competition law. Those mergers also generate efficiency gains and social benefits. In order to apply the failing firm defen

Companies share their intellectual property with potential competitors in many different ways, including patent pooling. A patent pool is an agreement between two or more patent owners to license one or more of their patents to one another or to third parties. In Europe the Commission used the term patent pool as the bringing together of the patents of two companies, which makes it available for u

This thesis concerns the relationship of the EU and the Saami indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula. The thesis highlights the positive and negative features of Sweden and Finland's accession to the European Union in 1995 and Norway's subsequent signing of the European Economic Area agreement. The Saami are Europe's only recognized indigenous group and the ac

A common feature within the European Union is that the responsibilities for environmental protection are separated from those managing natural resources and the economy. There are strong arguments for the idea that to be able to successfully resolve the many environmental challenges that lay ahead, it is necessary to integrate environmental concern in those sectors of the economy that affect them.

The ''functionality doctrine'' discussed in this paper was developed in the American trademark law as a judicial concept. It emerged soon after the adoption of the U.S Federal Trademark Act in 1946 and was aimed to define the implementation of the provisions of the Act prohibiting the trade mark protection for the functional signs. The doctrine gained its universal application and

The aim of this paper is to investigate certain aspects of the legal relationship between the EC and Switzerland in the field of public procurement. Public procurement can be defined as the purchase of goods, services, works and supplies by public authorities and enterprises. It comes as no surprise that public procurement has major economic ramifications, accounting for around 14% of the EC's

The aim of the paper is to discuss some of the basic elements of the legal system in EC law in comparison with the EEA Agreement. The conclusions will have special reference to Icelandic law. The reason for this approach is that the EEA Agreement is closely linked with EC law. Therefore it is necessary to begin approaching the basic rules within the EC in order to better understand the EEA system