Une cour d'appel ne saurait annuler une clause de non-concurrence souscrite pour une durée de trois ans au motif que, faute d'être limitée géographiquement, elle apparaît disproportionnée au regard de la liberté d'exercice de cet avocat, sans rechercher si cette obligation de non-concurrence était proportionnée aux intérêts légitimes à protéger, dès lors qu'elle ne concernait que les clients de son ancien cabinet définis comme les personnes physiques ou morales destinataires des factures établies par celui-ci au cours des douze derniers mois précédant la signature de la convention de présentation de clientèle.

Cass. 1re civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-24.541

CA Caen, 2e ch. civ. et com., 10 septembre 2015, n° 13-03439

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 5, 10 septembre 2015, n° 15/01899

CA Nîmes, 2e ch. com., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-01257

CA Lyon, 1re ch. civ. A, 10 septembre 2015, n° 13/07020

Une clause de non-concurrence postcontractuelle couvrant un rayon de 50 km autour du point de vente de l'ancien franchisé est disproportionnée eu égard à la faible technicité, spécificité et originalité du savoir-faire mis en œuvre dans le secteur de la restauration rapide (confection et vente de sandwichs, salades et pâtisseries, à emporter ou à consommer sur place).

L'ancien franchisé qui, après la rupture du contrat, continue d'accepter les bons de réduction créés et émis par le franchiseur, tient compte de l'ancienneté de la clientèle attachée au réseau pour le calcul des points de  son programme de fidélité et utilise toujours le nom de l'enseigne dans l'annuaire, se rend coupable de concurrence déloyale.

CA Bourges, ch. civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 15-00061

Afin de mettre un terme aux droits exclusifs d'importation dans les collectivités d'outre-mer conférés à des importateurs-grossistes, contraires à l'article L. 420-2-1 du Code de commerce, plusieurs industriels s'engagent à recourir périodiquement à des procédures d'appels d'offres transparentes et non-discriminatoires et à conclure avec les attributaires des contrats dénués d'exclusivité.

sur les pratiques mises en œuvre par les sociétés Bolton Solitaire SAS, Danone SA, Johnson & Johnson Santé et Beauté France SAS et Pernod-Ricard SA dans le secteur de la distribution des produits de grande consommation en outremer

ADLC, 10 septembre 2015, n° 15-D-14

Le représentant dont le contrat indique qu'il agit en toute autonomie, hors de tout pouvoir hiérarchique et de toute subordination, ne peut voir son contrat brutalement rompu pour absence de disponibilité à l'égard de son partenaire.

La demande d'indemnisation du partenaire victime de la rupture doit être rejetée lorsqu'il ne justifie que de son chiffre d'affaires et non de sa marge brute, le juge n'ayant pas à suppléer à sa carence.

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 5, 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-03318

L'absence de contrat-cadre ou de garantie de chiffre d'affaires n'exclut pas qu'une relation puisse être qualifiée d'établie dès lors que des commandes régulières et nombreuses ont été passées entre les partenaires.

Le fait qu'un prestataire ait dissimulé ses liens avec le salarié du client en charge des opérations en cause et qu'il ait eu recours à des sous-traitants ne constitue pas un manquement contractuel propre à justifier une rupture immédiate de relations commerciales établies.

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 5, 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-04208

Les retards et défauts de livraison récurrents d'un fournisseur justifient la rupture immédiate des relations commerciales établies par son distributeur, à plus forte raison lorsque celui-ci a repris une entreprise en difficultés et a besoin de fidéliser la clientèle.

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 5, 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-04102

CJEU, 3rd chamber, September 10, 2015, No C-47/14

CJEU, 7th chamber, September 10, 2015, No C-151/14

L'action d'une société contre son ancien gérant en raison d'un prétendu comportement illicite relève de la matière délictuelle lorsque ce comportement ne peut être considéré comme un manquement incombant au gérant en droit des sociétés.

Dans le cadre de l'action contractuelle d'une société contre son ancien gérant en raison d'un prétendu manquement aux obligations lui incombant en droit des sociétés, il appartient à la juridiction de renvoi, à défaut de précision dérogatoire dans les statuts de la société ou dans tout autre document, de déterminer le lieu dans lequel le gérant a effectivement déployé, de manière prépondérante, ses activités en exécution du contrat, à condition que la fourniture des services au sens de l'article 5, point 1, sous b) second tiret, sur le lieu considéré, ne soit pas contraire à la volonté des parties telle qu'elle ressort de ce qui a été convenu entre elles.

L'action d'une société contre son ancien gérant en raison d'un prétendu manquement aux obligations lui incombant en droit des sociétés relève de la matière contractuelle au sens de l'article 5, point 1, du règlement Bruxelles (I) bis. 

Lorsqu'une société assigne en justice son directeur et gérant, afin de faire constater des fautes commises dans l'exercice de ses fonctions et d'en obtenir réparation, les dispositions du chapitre II section 5 du règlement Bruxelles (I) bis régissant la compétence en matière de contrats individuels de travail s'opposent au jeu de l'article 5 relatif à la compétence en matière contractuelle et délictuelle, si cette personne a, en sa qualité de directeur et de gérant, accompli pendant un certain temps en faveur de cette société et sous la direction de celle-ci des prestations en contrepartie desquelles elle percevait une rémunération.

CJUE, 3e ch., 10 septembre 2015, n° C-47/14

La législation nationale qui réserve l'accès de la profession de notaire à ses seuls ressortissants crée une différence de traitement en raison de la nationalité, contraire à la liberté d'établissement.

CJUE, 7e ch., 10 septembre 2015, n° C-151/14

Cass. 1re civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-22.223

Cass. 1re civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-24.291

Cass. 1re civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-13.237

Cass. 1re civ., 10 septembre 2015, n° 14-13.236

CA Aix-en-Provence, 11e ch. b, 10 septembre 2015, n° 14/11903

CA Paris, Pôle 5, ch. 3, 9 septembre 2015, n° 13/17438

CJEU, 2nd chamber, September 9, 2015, No C-160/14

Lorsqu'il n'existe aucun recours juridictionnel de droit interne contre la décision d'une juridiction nationale, cette dernière est même tenue de saisir la Cour à titre préjudiciel, dès lors qu'une question d'interprétation du droit de l'union est soulevée devant elle.

CJUE, 2e ch., 9 septembre 2015, n° C-160/14

The fine imposed on an undertaking is not disproportionate merely because the sanctioned practices were implemented on a market in poor financial health and it only derived a limited profit from them.

An undertaking cannot complain about the unreasonableness of the length of the proceedings when it is partly responsible due to having provided incomplete information.

The fact that the Commission has obtained a large number of documents in the context of leniency applications in which relevant information was identified by applicant undertakings does not necessarily lead to a reduction of the duration of the procedure.

An undertaking with a shareholding of less than 20% in another company without any special rights allowing it either to determine the commercial conduct or block the strategic decisions of that company cannot be held liable for the latter's unlawful conduct. 

The fact that some of the component companies of the economic unit found guilty of the infringement were not active on the relevant market does not justify the exclusion of their turnover in determining the fine.

The Commission may use the average value of sales made throughout the infringement period and not those made by the undertakings during the last full business year of their participation in the infringement where the latter were not sufficiently representative of the economic importance of the infringement, given the considerable decline of the market during the period covered.

The fact that the Commission takes into account sales of cartelized products to customers outside the EEA where those products are then incorporated into other products sold to customers within the EEA while its Guidelines do not provide for such a situation - does not breach the principle of legal certainty insofar as those Guidelines are not intended to list exhaustively all the situations which the Commission may face in calculating the amount of fines in order to respect the broad discretion enjoyed by the Commission in setting it.

When a vertically integrated undertaking incorporates the goods in respect of which the infringement was committed into the finished products in its production units situated outside the EEA, the sale by that undertaking of those finished products in the EEA to independent third parties is liable to affect competition on the market for those products and, therefore, such an infringement may be considered to have had repercussions in the EEA, even if the market for the finished products in question constitutes a separate market from that concerned by the infringement.

The Commission has territorial jurisdiction to apply the EU competition rules to conduct implemented within the Union even if by undertakings established outside the EEA.

Where it is established that a joint venture forms a single undertaking with its parents, sales from the joint venture to the latter must be characterized as intragroup sales for the purpose of calculating the value of sales to which the infringement relates.

Undertakings cannot have a legitimate expectation that the Commission will maintain its policy in matters of sanctions, insofar as it has a broad power of discretion in that regard.

The principle of equal treatment must be reconciled with the principle of legality and thus a person may not rely, in support of his claim, on an unlawful act committed in favor of a third party.

Where the Commission does not involves the subsidiary responsible for the practices in the administrative procedure, it does not breach the parent undertakings's defense rights on the grounds that the parent was allegedly unable to access the subsidiary's documents after the transfer, since there is a general duty of care attaching to any undertaking to ensure the proper maintenance of records in its books and files of information enabling its activities to be retrieved.

Neither the General Court nor the Court of Justice is bound by the conclusions reached by the Advocates General, nor by the reasoning which led to those conclusions. 

Insofar as the the liability of the parent company is derived from that of the subsidiary, the Commission is not required to involve the former in the administrative procedure and to attribute liability to it.

The parent, as a customer of the joint venture, clearly has an interest in managing the production and distribution activities of that joint venture in relation to the product in question.

The power of the representative of the parent company to decide to change the organizational structure of the joint venture by replacing the group management team by an executive board and to discontinue the management of the group on a regional basis and implement a central management, constitutes a relevant element in the assessment of the economic, organizational and legal links between a joint venture and its parent company.

The presence on the joint venture's supervisory board of several persons simultaneously carrying out managerial functions within the parent company is further evidence of the decisive influence exercised by the parent over the subsidiary's commercial policy.

The exercise of decisive influence can be deduced from an abstract analysis of the provisions of the joint venture agreement which puts its shareholders in a position to control the adoption of strategic commercial decisions, the drawing up of operational and strategic plans as well as the supervision of the day-to-day management and to be informed of the operation of the undertaking.

Finding the existence of a single economic entity among a number of companies forming part of a group involves consideration of whether the parent company has influenced the pricing policy of its subsidiary, production and distribution activities, sales objectives, gross margins, sales costs, cash-flow, stocks and marketing. 

The fact that a subsidiary is a full-function joint venture with a separate legal personality does not suffice, by itself, to exclude the possibility that its conduct may be attributed to its parent companies. 

GC, 3rd chamber, September 9, 2015, No T-92/13

When assessing whether the fine has sufficient deterrent effect, the Commission is not obliged to take into account the fact that the overcharge by the cartel was not passed on in the market for finished products, insofar as when fixing the basic amount of the fine, it only took into account the value of sales of the component products and to which the infringement relates.

The Commission may incorporate into the value of sales to which the infringement relates direct sales made in the EEA through transformed products even if they were not made on the product market concerned by the infringement, especially where it does not take into account the value of the finished product as a whole but only that of the cartelized integrated components.

The fact that the subsidiary responsible for the infrigment is under the control of a liquidator and could not access the documents in its possession, does not breach the rights of defense of the parent undertakings, which, by virtue of a general duty of care, were required to ensure the proper maintenance of information necessary to their defense.  

The Commission is not required to send a Statement of Objections to a subsidiary under the control of a liquidator where it imputes liability for its unlawful conduct to the parent undertakings with which it formed an economic unit.

The supplier/client relationship between the joint venture and the parent undertakings, and vice versa, demonstrate the very specific interest for the latter in managing the production or distribution activities of the subsidiary in order to take full advantage of the added value created by their vertical integration.

The fact that members of the supervisory board of the joint venture hold management positions with the parent undertakings and are involved directly in the structure of the joint venture, and that the board discusses matters relating to market developments, sales, sales prices, volume of stocks, investments in new products and the necessary reorganizations, constitutes evidence of the parents' decisive influence over the latter's conduct. 

The fact that the agreement creating the joint venture was organized in such a way that its parent companies could control the adoption of strategic commercial decisions, the drawing up of operational and strategic plans, the supervision of the day-to-day management and be informed of its operation may establish that they actually exercise a decisive influence over its conduct.

GC, 3rd chamber, September 9, 2015, No T-91/13

CA Nancy, 5e ch. com., 9 septembre 2015, n° 14/00713

Where, due to the significant decline of sales during the latter part of the undertaking's involvement in the cartel, its sales during the last full year of participation were not sufficiently representative of the economic importance of that infringement, the Commission can refer to  average sales throughout the infringement period.

The connecting factor with the EEA of the value of sales to which the infringement relates is the place of delivery of the products and not the place where the negotiations took place or the place of billing.

An undertaking which provides timely cooperation in the form of evidence with significant added value still cannot benefit from a reduction of 50% of the fine where, in parallel, it also tried to minimize the extent and significance of certain exchanges. 

The existence of a joint central organization for the Asian and European arrangements is not necessary to establish the existence of single and continuous infringement.

The Commission may include in the same single and continuous global infringement meetings held between the same undertakings although some mainly concern the Asian market and others mainly the European market, where the prices charged on each market were discussed and that the capacity reductions decided in Asia were intended to facilitate price increases in Europe.

Exchanges of information on production volumes and production capacity are anticompetitive insofar as the information exchanged is much more precise than what the participants could have obtained through market research institutes. 

The fact that the anticompetitive practices concern products which, although similar, are of different types and sizes cannot prevent the Commission from concluding that those practices constitute a single infringement.

Arguments and complaints set out only in documents annexed to the application are inadmissible.

There is a link of complementarity between the various instances of conduct which form part of an overall plan making it possible to find a single and continuous infringement where they involve the same participants, objectives and methods of operation.

GC, 3rd chamber, September 9, 2015, No T-84/13

The Commission is entitled to include in the value of sales to which the infringement relates direct sales in the EEA through transformed products, even if they were not made on the market for the goods concerned by the infringement especially when it does not take into account the value of the transformed product as a whole but only the value of the cartelized products that were incorporated into them.

When a vertically integrated undertaking incorporates the goods in respect of which the infringement was committed into the finished products in its production units situated outside the EEA, the sale of those finished products in the EEA to independent third parties is liable to affect trade between Member States.

The Commission has territorial jurisdiction to find the infringement when undertakings, even if established outside the EEA, concert on the prices they charge to their customers in the EEA and put that concertation into effect by selling at prices which are actually coordinated, irrespective of the location of the sources of supply and production plants.

Where the Commission otherwise establishes the undertaking's participation in the infringement, the lack of access to documents which do not contain exculpatory evidence does not constitute a breach of its rights of defense.

The exercise of decisive influence by a minority shareholder over a joint subsidiary can result from its veto rights over the strategic decisions of the latter, the provisions of the agreements creating it which make the subsidiary's business plan subject to its prior consultation and approval for the entire duration of its existence, the appointment of joint managers and board members and their economic ties due to being each other's preferred supplier.

The mere fact that there is identity of object between the meetings and bilateral contacts in which the undertaking participated and the overall cartel or the fact that it had contacts with undertakings whose participation was established are not sufficient to demonstrate that it was aware of that cartel.

GC, 3rd chamber, September 9, 2015, No T-104/13

The Commission violates its Guidelines when, without providing any objective justification, it does not use the results which are most accurate and closest to reality to calculate the value of sales to which the infringement relates.

An undertaking's knowledge of the existence of the overall cartel may come from its participation in bilateral contacts which had the same scope as the cartel and reflected the discussions held at its meetings.

The sole fact that bilateral contacts in which an undertaking has particpated and an overall cartel have the same object is not sufficient to establish the undertaking's involvelment in that cartel.

The Commission does not infringe the rights of the defense when it provides explanations additional to those contained in the Statement of Objections in order to rebut the undertakings' arguments in response thereto.

GC, 3rd chamber, September 9, 2015, No T-82/13

Le constructeur engage sa responsabilité à l'égard du concessionnaire victime d'incursions sur son territoire lorsque, informé de celles-ci, il tarde à faire respecter la discipline du réseau.

CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 4, 9 septembre 2015, n° 14-06837

Le conseil des prud'hommes possède une compétence exclusive pour connaître des actes de concurrence déloyale reprochés par un employeur à son ancien salarié, lorsque ces faits se sont produits avant la cessation du contrat de travail et, lorsque accomplis postérieurement à celle-ci, ils sont directement liés aux précédents, sans qu'existe une indivisibilité entre ce litige, et celui opposant cet employeur à la société ayant embauché ledit salarié, les décisions rendues par le conseil des prud'hommes et le tribunal de commerce pouvant être exécutées simultanément.

Le conseil des prud'hommes possède une compétence exclusive pour connaître des actes de concurrence déloyale commis par un ancien salarié avant la cessation de son contrat de travail ou accomplis postérieurement, s'ils sont directement liés aux précédents, à l'exception du grief d'absence de passation normale de ses pouvoirs de président et de mandataire social, qui ne concerne pas sa situation de salarié.

L'action en concurrence déloyale d'une société commerciale contre une autre société commerciale relève de la compétence du tribunal de commerce, qui, s'il l'estime nécessaire, pourra surseoir à statuer, dans l'attente de la décision du conseil des prud'hommes relative à l'action en concurrence déloyale opposant cette première société à l'un de ses anciens salariés embauché par la seconde .

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