Franchising may be an attractive proposition for many companies wishing to expand internationally. Knowing how to structure your franchise, and to identify the next steps for expansion into other countries, is crucial.

Increased awareness of competition law in the past few years, alongside the evolving legislative framework and practice on the EU level, has led to the continuous growth of CMS’s competition law practice, according to CMS Partner Szabolcs Szendro.

The Law on Prevention of Corruption (the “Law”), the key piece of Serbian anti-corruption legislation that started to apply in September 2020, recently received a short set of amendments.

In April 2018, the European Commission imposed a fine of €124.5 million on French multinational telecommunications and mass media company Altice, for implementing its acquisition of PT Portugal before the Commission had approved the transaction and before the acquisition had even been notified to the Commission in some respects. In its judgment in Altice Europe v Commission, issued on September 22, 2021 (Case T-425/18), the European General Court (EGC), as the first instance EU court, dismissed Altice’s appeal against the Commission’s decision in its entirety, although it did reduce the original fine by €6.2 million, to €118.6 million, given that Altice had eventually notified the transaction.

In its judgment on 14 July 2021 in Case T-399/20, the General Court assessed whether there is likelihood of confusion between figurative trademarks that depict two letters from different foreign alphabets.

The Commission for Protection of Competition initiated ex officio antitrust proceedings against Atlantic Group, Atlantic Brands and Strauss Adriatic and conducted dawn raids, in order to investigate potential existence of restrictive agreements.