Appeal Vs CMA Decision On Microsoft Activision Deal Fast Tracked To July

gameranx.com:

The Microsoft Activision case is being fast tracked under the UK’s Competition Appeals Tribunal, as CAT Justice Marcus Smith has scheduled the first hearings of the appeal in July.

As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Justice Smith explained his decision in this way:

“The hearing of the substance of this application will take place in the fortnight commencing July 24, so the weeks commencing the 24th and 31st of July.

I’m not expecting it to take the whole of those 10 days but I would like the parties to err on the side of longer rather than shorter oral submissions. It seems to me that that is an excess that we can afford.

There is a tendency—and it’s very much driven by the Tribunal rather than the parties—to cut submissions to shorter than they perhaps ought to be. I want to do the reverse in this case.

I want to have the parties understand that we will want to give them every opportunity to unpack the difficulties of this case in oral submissions and for us to have the time to do that.”

Justice Smith made this decision in the first case management conference for this appeal. In this conference, lawyers for the CMA, and lawyers for Microsoft and Activision, argued how they would proceed with the case. While the CMA tried to delay the hearing so that they could prepare their arguments, Justice Smith rejected their request and chose to fast track it instead.

The conference was actually livestreamed, though it is no longer possible to view that stream. You can read this oral summary of events from Florian Mueller, but we’ll look at something else.

The CAT provided a summary of this appeal case, some points of which may not have come up in this conference but will appear in the proper trial. So, let’s look at the