Innovation, competition, and the pharmaceutical sector: theory and practice

With high-technology markets coming increasingly under scrutiny from a competition law perspective, scholars and institutions have increasingly highlighted the relevance of innovation-related considerations in competition law analyses.

Fortunately, there is a rich theoretical debate on the innovation-competition relationship, in particular by Smith, Schumpter, and Arrow and as further developed over the years.

Using the EU competition law case law in the pharmaceutical sector as an illustration, this piece investigates the approach to the innovation-competition relationship taken by the European Commission and Court of Justice of the EU.