The European Commission decided on Thursday 30 January to impose fines on several companies belonging to Comcast Corporation, including a fine of €14.3 million on NBCUniversal LLC. NBCUniversal is alleged to have restricted the sale by traders of derivative products licenced within the European Economic Area to territories and customers other than those allocated to them. These restrictions concerned derivative products related to Minions, Jurassic World and other images and characters from NBCUniversal’s film works.
The American NBCUniversal group operates cable and broadcasting networks as well as film and television production companies. One of its divisions is responsible for the licencing of intellectual property rights.
NBCUniversal licences hundreds of companies in Europe to sell and manufacture products that use this intellectual property, said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the Commission responsible for Competition Policy, citing Jurassic Park toys, Minions satchels and Shrek cups.
In exchange, these licensees pay a portion of their revenues to NBCUniversal as royalties. “These products can be found in millions of European homes”, Vestager said.
NBCUniversal engaged in “illegal” behaviour for many products (clothing, candy, toys, cups and household products). These contracts with licensees have “fragmented the European single market”, says the Commission. These practices have reduced consumer choice and may have affected prices, Vestager said.
The investigation showed that NBCUniversal used contracts to define in which countries the licensees could sell their products and in which countries they could not.
In some contracts, NBCUniversal has limited the freedom of operators to sell their products online. The company even provided some licensees with a list of customers to whom they were entitled to sell.
“These restrictions meant that retailers could not freely choose which products they could order from European distributors”, Vestager said.
For example, a supermarket in Spain was not allowed to sell pyjamas depicting E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial from a Belgian seller. The Big Lebowski T-shirts are not available to Swedish teenagers due to these restrictions. “Consumers have less choice at what are probably higher prices. In short, consumers, retailers and licensees have all been denied the benefits of the single market”, the Vice-President emphasised.
Trademark owners cannot therefore, in the Commission’s view, prohibit their non-exclusive licensees from selling in certain Member States or from selling to certain customers, Ms Vestager summarised. This illegal behaviour continued for more than six years.
NBCUniversal co-operated with the Commission, resulting in a 30% reduction of the fine. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)