Los descuentos de fidelidad: esperando a Intel

Loyalty rebates offered subject to the condition that the customers buys all or most of its needs of a given product from a supplier, are presumed to be illegal when granted by a dominant company. The judgement of the General Court in the Intel case seems to qualify this presumption as a iuris et de iure one. Advocate General Wahl, in his conclusions presented to the CJEU advocates for a less formalistic approach and for abandoning the idea that these discounts are per se abusive, claiming that it an analysis of the legal and economic context in which they are offered is always needed. When this analysis is related to offers made to hospitals at the time of negotiating the purchase of medicines, special characteristics of the legal and economic context of the pharmaceutical industry shall undoubtedly be of material importance.