Indirect purchasers’ standing and passing-on defence in the U.S. and Europe : Development of each doctrine and the state of the law

Abstract

The work is completed with a dogmatic method. The material used ranges all the way from literature and articles to case law and official records. The main material consists of articles published in law journals. The main topic of the thesis is the question of indirect purchasers’ standing and passing-on defence in the case of an infringement of antitrust law. In the thesis, the jurisdictions under scrutiny are the US and the EU. The development of overall competition policy and the doctrine on indirect purchasers’ standing are inspected separately on behalf of each jurisdiction. A particular emphasis is added on the development of the respective policies and how the current stances on the issues under observation have formed over time. Furthermore, the aspect making this issue current in Europe, the coming into force of the Directive 2014/104/EU, is examined with a look toward the future.