At the EU level, a significant turmoil has gathered around geo-blocking and its abolition, one of the objectives of the digital single market strategy. This project aims at analysing the geo-blocking conduct and at balancing competition and intellectual property interests, in case of its abolition.
Last Update: 29.12.17
Geo-blocking may be defined as a digital instrument aimed at segmenting the purchase applications on a geographic basis. If this practice is accompanied by the purpose of applying different prices and conditions in the various market segments, then we are facing the additional phenomenon of geo-filtering.
This research project discusses the geo-blocking and geo-filtering through intellectual property and competition law categories, after having qualified this practice in the EU framework and, in particular, how it deals with fundamental freedoms.
Two key-words constitute the fil rouge of the research work: ‘discrimination’ for the competition law analysis and ‘territoriality’ for the IP one.
From a competition law perspective, the key-concept is that the economic theory does not condemn price discrimination and market segmentation per se and the European Parliament itself shared this approach. However, it should take into proper consideration the fact that competition law in Europe can be qualified as a functional tool for the creation of the internal market. Therefore, the abolition of geo-blocking would be justified by the goal of preventing companies from re-creating, with their practices, barriers between the Member States. While an absolute ban on geographical discrimination - realized through geo-blocking - would be strictly linked to the need to strengthen the single market (as it already happened offline), price discrimination - realized through geo-filtering - should be subject to a reading inspired by the protection of consumer welfare so that competition law could evaluate it positively when it results in output increase.
As mentioned, the key-‐‑word related to geo-‐‑blocking in the IP context is ‘territoriality’: intellectual property rights are territorial in nature, i.e. their effectiveness is limited to the territory of the State granting it. Geo-‐‑blocking constitutes the implementation of this approach in practical terms and its abolition may be seen as the denial of the territoriality principle, since it would spell the end of the territorial dimension of markets. The IP dimension of the geo-‐‑blocking analysis is fully linked to the review of the EU copyright rules. This research aims at demonstrating that - in order to partially remove the geo-‐‑blocking measures - firstly a harmonization of the copyright rules of the Member States is needed and the copyright’s principle of territoriality and the EU fundamental freedoms aimed at the market integration should be adequately balanced.
Laura Zoboli
Federico Ghezzi
Zielsetzungen der Europäischen Union
