Intellectual Property and Article 82 EC

Conflicts may arise between IP rights, in particular the exclusive rights vested upon the patentee, and the imperative to preserve competitive markets. IP law does not give the holder of an IP right immunity from being accused of violation of antitrust law. Therefore, IP law does not provide a carte blanche to violate the antitrust laws. If a product or service that an undertaking sells incorporates IPRs, that does not mean that anything one does with that product or service is immune. This is not only the European approach, but that of the US as well: As the D.C. Circuit in Microsoft explained, the proposition that a firm has ‘an absolute and unfettered right to use its intellectual property as it wishes [is] no more correct than the proposition that use of one's personal property, such as a baseball bat, cannot give rise to tort liability.’